Why is it that liberals have higher incomes, but conservatives give more to charity?

Hey, all!  I try not to do this too often, but I did get into a discussion with a liberal friend from college about whether or not Obama was fulfilling all of my friend’s hopes and dreams.  What followed was an interesting exchange, and while I’ve included the whole (long!) thing here what I really wanted to share was the last piece of it.  I asked my friend why he thinks it is that nearly everyone knows liberals who’ve turned conservative as they grow up, but I’ve never met a single person who went the other way.  No liberal I know (and believe me I know hundreds) had ever previously expressed to me any conservative leanings, nor has any liberal I know ever claimed to have previously been a conservative.

I argue that this is because so much is invested by the teacher unions, college professors and the media at indocrinating kids into liberalism, that if you haven’t fallen for it by the time you graduate college, you’re probably free from it forever.  He argued (not surprisingly):

* people become more republican b/c they are wealthier, have families and want to protect their pocketbook and unfortunately I think some of this or some of these people are just becoming more self centered and less concerned with others

So I shared with him the study at the bottom of this thread, showing that not only do liberal families on average have 6% higher income, but conservative families donate 30% more to charity.  It’s fascinating, and not at all surprising to me.  I thought the study and the links might interest some of your liberal friends as well.

–Jason

———- Forwarded message ———-

---

From: Jason
To: My friend
Sent: Fri Mar 06 21:09:12 2009
Subject: Proposed new Obama policy: Gift cards only

It was a rough week for gift-giving in the BO administration.  Maybe they should just start giving out Target gift cards instead. I mean, come on, who doesn’t want a Target gift card . . .

I can’t decide which is more embarrassing . . . First there was the Prime Minister of England, a country that’s been our staunchest ally for going on a century or so.  Gordon Brown came bearing a first edition of the definitive seven-volume biography of the greatest leader of perhaps the last century, Winston Churchill. He also bestowed upon the President a pen holder meticulously carved from the timbers of a British naval vessel which had been used to end the Arabian slave trade out of Kenya, Obama’s ancestral homeland.  What did BO give in return?  Read on . . .

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/03/022991.php

Next, Secretary of State Clinton met with her Russian counterpart in Geneva.  Being the clever person she is, she built on Obama and her brilliant strategy of “rebooting” the relationship with Russia after all the evil misdeeds of the criminal Bush administration (whatever). And she brought along a gift of a big red emergency button.  They put a big label on it in English and in Russian to say “RESET”.  Pretty funny, right?  Except in the Obama State department, apparently no one speaks Russian.  So the Russian Foreign Minister had to point out to them that the word didn’t mean RESET, it meant OVERCHARGED.  Oops.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/06/clinton-goofs-russian-translation-tells-diplomat-wants-overcharge-ties/

Perhaps Hillary should have asked her predecessor, Condi Rice.  In addition to her PhD in Political Science which she received at age 26 for a dissertation on military policy and politics in Czechoslovakia, she’s also a fluent Russian speaker.  Remind me again what Hillary’s qualifications for Sec of State were?  Oh yeah, losing in the primary to BO.

Trust me guys . . . you can’t go wrong with Target gift cards.

–Jason

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 4:31 PM,  my friend wrote:
Just wish your president hadn’t spent years getting us into all this crap in the first place…..

From: Me to my friend

Sent: Sun Mar 08 18:20:17 2009
Subject: Re: Proposed new Obama policy: Gift cards only

Hmm. It’s a pretty interesting response, and as you’ve hopefully concluded I’ve long since given up on convincing anyone on the left that there might, possibly, conceivably, remotely be anything redeeming about the conservative principles on which our country was founded.  It’s interesting to note, however, that everyone knows people who were liberal when they were young and, as they grew and matured, they became more conservative.  When was the last time you met someone who went in the other direction?  Do you know any lefty adults who were conservative in their twenties?  Interesting, isn’t it?  Not saying it means anything, maybe it just means that we conservatives are old and crotchety, but maybe it means that the entire educational infrastructure of our country is dedicated to indoctrinating kids into the merits of the left (because, after all, our kids are exposed ~8 hours a day almost exclusively to employees of one of the most devoted Democratic unions in the country, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers).

But this email wasn’t about any of that.  It was a fairly amusing (doncha think) example of a pretty amateurish example of a guy who’s never had a job with any real responsibility (seriously, a US Senator?) who’s now responsible for probably the largest, most complex and highest-profile organization the world has ever known.  And, not surprisingly, he’s making some mistakes.

You may not care, you may forgive him for it, you may think that our relationship with Britain isn’t all that important and so who cares if we insult them . . . but George Bush had an excellent relationship with Tony Blair and with Gordon Brown. Hell, the relationship was so strong with Blair that it cost Blair his job.  And your response to that story is to relexively blame George Bush.

I’ve got no problem listing the things Bush did which I thought were wrong. I think he overspent. I think he could have been more consistent with his approach to the financial crisis, and in general I think the markets would be better off if we let them sort out winners and losers.  But in general I think he did a good job as President.  Is there anything Obama could do that would cause one of his true believers to question whether he’d done the right thing?  What about when he moves to the right?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123638765474658467.html

The link above is from the Wall Street Journal today.  It documents how Obama’s Justice Department just pushed a position that is far more aggressive on Executive Power than Bush or Cheney ever proposed . . . is that disappointing to you? Is anything?

Look, I certainly admire the job Obama did in his campaign, and he certainly did a great job tapping into the hatred that the media stirred up over the last 8 years for the policies of Bush.  And it’s enlightening to see that in his first 50 days Obama’s actually continued a bunch of those anti-terror policies without the left emitting a peep (see link above).  And the “It’s all Bush’s fault” argument will probably work for another year or so since most people will never read the Community Reinvestment Act and will never watch Chris Dodd and Barney Frank’s jaw-dropping statements in favor of “rolling the dice” on subprime mortgages.  But you’ve got a Harvard MBA and work for a pretty impressive icon of capitalism.  You must know in your heart that Obama’s demonizing of companies and of the wealthy and of success, combined with the tax policies he’s proposing, are causing the markets to respond as they have.  And the more successful he is at implementing those policies and that spending, the higher the unemployment rate will go, the slower the recovery, and the more it will hurt.  In 2010 or 2012 do you think he’s really going to convince a nation with Carter-like 20% unemployment and hyper-inflation that he’s still just cleaning up Bush’s mess?  How’d that work out for Carter’s second term?

In any case, like I said, I write none of this in hopes of changing your mind.  I invite your thoughts rebutting any of it, and if you take offense I’m sorry.  It’s just as compelling for me to try and explain why I feel Obama’s policies are killing our economy (and hurting our national security) as it no doubt was/is for you to explain why Bush’s did.

Take care, friend.

–Jason

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 7:17 PM,  my friend wrote:

I know a lot of republicans who voted for obama this time. People who thought bush screwed things up.

From: Me
To: My friend

Sent: Sun Mar 08 19:50:47 2009

Subject: Re: Proposed new Obama policy: Gift cards only

I agree a lot of Republicans voted for Obama.  He couldn’t have won without them.  In fact, at least three of them were very prominent conservatives: David Gergen, Christopher Buckley and David Brooks.  I can’t count how many of liberals cited these three during the election as proof that Obama was no leftist.  As you may have read in Forbes this week, all three have now ackowledged that they were wrong about Obama and that the policies he’s pursuing are neither moderate nor good for the economy or for the country.  Do you think the Obama today, who pushed through the largest spending bill in history and is now following it with an even larger one, would attract as many Republicans today as he did back in November when he had no record at all to run against?

But my question was not how many Republicans voted for Obama (an unreliable metric considering that McCain is hardly what one would call a conservative).  My question was whether more liberals become conservatives as they accumulate evidence and experience or whether more conservatives become liberals.  I know, literally, hundreds of liberals.  None of them ever expressed conservative leanings earlier in life.  I know, perhaps, dozens of conservatives.  Many of them were not always that way.

Again, you can write it off as mere crotchetiness as many like to do. But I spend a lot of time questioning whether I may be wrong about my political convictions.  I read liberal opinion pieces. I read Krugman, and Friedman . . . I even read DemocraticUnderground.com.  I wish those who think Obama walks on water would dedicate a few minutes a day to reading something like Powerlineblog.com, one of the smartest, most thoughtful and independent blogs I’ve ever read.  If you can read four or five posts there each day and not find something that, as a parent and as an American, concerns you . . . well, then you’ll be that much more sure that your ideology is the right one.

Facts are easy to check and confirm, but the bias that’s built into so much of Obama’s media coverage is a lot harder to detect if it’s the only thing one sees.  I attended an awards dinner for George Bush a few weeks before he left office.  He was being recognized by Africare, an African non-profit called Africare for a humanitaran award.  They were recognizing him for the fact that his administration gave more money and accomplished more for stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa than, in the words of the charity director, every other administration before him, combined.  There were well over 1000 people at the dinner, and about 3 or 4 journalists.  Nearly everyone in America heard about Kanye West, the icon of wisdom, say that George Bush hates black people.  Did you hear that he’s also responsible for saving the lives of more of them than perhaps any other person in history?  Don’t you think you deserve to hear all the news, and decide how to factor it all together?

–Jason

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 8:12 PM, my liberal friend wrote:
My views are the following:
* country is right center generally
* people become more republican b/c they are wealthier, have families and want to protect their pocketbook and unfortunately I think some of this or some of these people are just becoming more self centered and less concerned with others
* yet, that all being said, I’m not sure how to generalize the point the way you do. Clinton and obama won b/c the country (all these conservatives you cite) voted for democrats. This continues to shift back and forth over time.

From: Jason
Date: Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 9:34 PM
Subject: Re: Proposed new Obama policy: Gift cards only

I really do appreciate your sharing your thoughts here. I think you’re a really smart guy, a knowledgable business thinker, and exactly the kind of person who I would otherwise expect to be troubled by some of the demonization of commerce and profit going on by the Obama/Biden/Schumer/Dodd/Frank/McCaskill crowd these days.

Your point about people becoming more conservative as they accumulate wealth and become more self-focused is an oft-repeated caricature of the right. Fortunately it’s contradicted by data.  There was a study at Syracuse University in 2006 which found that not only are liberal families’ incomes on average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

There’s a more detailed treatise of it here: http://newsbusters.org/node/9323
The author’s website is here: http://www.arthurbrooks.net/whoreallycares/statistics.html

And if you’re aware of any study contradicting it, I’d be happy to read it.  Another fun fact: If liberals gave blood like conservatives do, the blood supply in the U.S. would jump by about 45%.  So it’s not that conservatives don’t care about other people.  It’s that we’ve looked at the massive body of historical evidence and concluded that getting government out of people’s way and letting the private sector innovate and solve problems has lifted more people out of poverty than all the misguided “Community Reinvestment Acts” and “Economic Stimulus Packages” of every socialist government in history.

According to the author, “You find that people who believe it’s the government’s job to make incomes more equal are far less likely to give their money away.”  I think, by the way, that this is why Obama’s reducing charitable giving deductions.  The extent to which people donate to private charities makes poor people more dependent on the government and reduces the role of private charities and local communities in solving problems.

Clinton won because he ran a brilliant campaign against a lousy campaigner (who’d won in ’88 on Reagan’s strength), he was fairly centrist, and he governed that way.  Obama won because, in spite of being far and away the most radical person who’s ever run for a party’s nomination, with the most liberal voting record in the Senate and having Saul Alinsky and William Ayers as his political mentors and Jeremiah Wright as a spiritual mentor, the media sold him to the country as a moderate post-racial post-partisan healer, a salve for our political discord, and a centrist who would work to unite the country.  Fifty days into office he’s proposing more debt than the country had seen in total in its 230 year history.  I have no doubt we’ll still be hearing the story of Obama’s centrist/moderate philosophies in 2010 and 2012, but with 2 years of these types of radical actions to run against, and considering that a shift of <430,000 votes in 2008 would have given McCain the victory, do you think the same story will sell as well, especially if it turns out that demonizing businesses and taxing job creators doesn’t do much to fix the economy?  And G-d help the left if the right has the good sense to nominate another Reagan, instead of the milquetoast conservatism of a McCain.

The issues I have my eye on for the moment are things like Card Check, which would rob workers of the right to a secret ballot and allow unions to bully them into signing up, the ’10 census which Obama has proposed moving to the White House for the first time in history, and the Fairness Doctrine which would eliminate the only conservative media outlet in the nation, talk radio.  I pay attention to these because they’re all efforts to prevent a free competition of ideas in the country, in the same way that Chris Matthews feeling a “thrill running up my leg” at the sight of Obama already prevents most Americans from learning the truth about what their government is doing.  If there’s a free competition of ideas, I have every confidence that the inflation and unemployment that inevitably will follow the current policies will do the same for the Democrats in 2010 as the Dem Congress’s actions did in 1994.  One party rule, whether by the left or the right, is dangerous.  One party rule under the triumvirate of Obama-Pelosi-Reid is as sure a path to an economic wasteland as anything we ever saw during the long and death-filled reign of Socialism.

But seriously, how about those income and charity stats . . . surprised?

–Jason

Thus far I’ve not heard back . . .

What conservatives must do now

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/05/atlanta.reacts.obama.win/index.html

The article above is one that I’m trying to use as a silver lining of sorts. It’s a CNN story visiting with several African Americans in and around Atlanta. They’re talking about the inspiration they feel from Obama’s election, and one man in his twenties makes the particularly good point that for a lot of black kids this will be the first role model they’ve had who doesn’t sing, dance or play sports.

The fact is there are large parts of our society which have felt even more “out in the wilderness” than the GOP does right now. If Obama’s election helps put to rest the notion that America is a racist country, then there’s something very useful there.  If it provides inspiration to little black kids who previously could only aspire to sports fame, then it’s even more valuable. Mobilizing the brains of millions of kids who’ve been educationally left behind is just as powerful a boost to our country’s capability as was the movement for women’s suffrage and allowing women into the workforce. We simply can’t compete in the world with 10, 20, 40, 60 percent of our citizens on the sidelines.

The flip side, of course, is that electing pro-welfare Democrats is a sure way to ensure that the poor stay dependent on government. In that sense, Obama’s presidency, if it moves people toward dependence on government, is long on symbolism and short on actual help for poor folks.

What the GOP needs to do — desperately needs to do — is to lay out a clear, understandable case for this newly-politically-active class of citizens, and for all Americans.  Now that they know they can do anything, that the country is truly full of possibilities for them, we must make the case to them that the clearest path to achieving those dreams is by reducing the barriers that stand in the way of innovation and economic mobility. That the best way to achieve prosperity for themselves and their famlies is by increasing the freedoms they enjoy, not building up barriers which make America less competitive. And we must demonstrate that the party which does that is the conservative party, the Republican party. And lest we forget, the party of Lincoln.

It’s a task made tougher by the mantras that we’ll hear from the left and the media over the coming years about how the government is there to take care of you, protect you from the big bad evil businesses out there, and care for you from cradle to grave.  But until we can present a cohesive explanation of why the collective wisdom of individual Americans is not better and smarter than government bureaucrats telling us how to live our lives, then we won’t capture the hearts and minds of the voters.

Ironically, bipartisanship will now depend on Obama . . .

Well, the election is finally over and Barack Obama is getting ready for the first job where he’ll actually manage someone, or run an operation. The first business I ran was selling ads on a desk calendar that I distributed to Freshman at my college. That might have been a better place to start for Obama, but things worked out differently and next year he’ll have 1,800,000 employees and oversee a budget of about $2,700,000,000.  Well, you’ve gotta start somewhere!

I received an email from a friend who I’d congratulated on the election, and she expressed a sincere hope that conservatives will give Obama a chance so that Obama can end the partisan bickering and move our country forward.  And while I agree with the sentiment that ending partisan bickering would be a great thing, it’s really up to the left now. The fact is, there’s not really much Republicans can do about it either way.  American voters have given Democrats control of the House, the Senate and the White House.  G-d willing the Senate will not go to 60-40, but even at 56-44 there’s very little my side can do to stop the left’s agenda at this point.

So the real determination of whether my suspicions of Obama or my friends faith in him are correct will be whether Obama, Reid and Pelosi pursue a hard left agenda (as Reid and Pelosi at least have promised to do), or whether Obama chooses to follow his claims of centrism with actions. Only by doing that can he end the partisanship as he’s promised to do.

The reason I consider this such a tragic outcome for the country is that McCain spent his career building compromise and coalitions, and Obama had the most liberal and one of the most partisan records in his short Senate tenure. Any hope I have at this point is based on the fact that Obama has demonstrated in his campaigning that he’s quite comfortable changing his position on issues to triangulate around the electorate, much like Clinton did successfully.  If Obama continues to do so then the right may complain less, but it will be the hard left that will drive the bickering. For example, how long will it take Cindy Sheehan, MoveOn.org and the liberal media to turn on Obama if he announces that, now that he’s seen the full situation in Iraq he believes we must keep troops there for the forseeable future to prevent defeat.

On the other hand, while it may be impossible to imagine at this point, will American Jews (of which I am one) continue to deliver Florida to an Obama who allows Iran to aquire nuclear weapons and threaten a second Holocaust?

I hope Obama does choose to be a more Clintonian centrist rather than the Chicago liberal he’s been up to this point in his career.  But if he takes office and begins to pursue things like Card Check (ending the secret ballot for union organization), Fairness Doctrine (ending free speech by forcing conservative talk radio off the radio), and higher taxes that drive us into economic calamity, then the 56 million Americans who voted against him will probably not have much trouble attracting over the 371 thousand voters who swung the electoral college to Obama in the first place.

Obama won by holding Kerry’s 2004 states and adding several red ones to his column. So how many votes would McCain have needed to have prevented this?

• 106,289 in OH
• 99,152 in FL
• 77,931 in VA
• 69,751 in CO
• 11,674 in IN
• 6080 in NC

In total less than 371,000 votes separated McCain from the Presidency.

Of course, I understand that elections matter and the closeness of Obama’s victory does not change the fact that he gets to sit in the big chair now. But while being President will certainly be an exciting job for Obama, and some excellent managerial experience for his resume 🙂 he’s got some pretty big challenges ahead:

1. By breaking his word to accept public financing, Obama has ensured that no Democrat will ever again enjoy a $600 Million to $84 Million spending advantage in a general election. Obama’s reneging left McCain at the largest spending disadvantage in US political history, and effectively killed public financing for presidential races. No serious candidate will ever settle for $84 million again, and McCain shouldn’t have done so. It’s hard to imagine outspending someone seven to one and still only prevail by 52% to 46%
2. Obama’s set higher expectations than any president, and perhaps any dictator, could ever achieve. A father of two killed himself a few days ago and left a suicide note asking Obama to take care of his family. A woman on TV last night was saying that she was so relieved because she didn’t know how she was going to pay her rent, but that now Obama was going to rescue her. Obama himself has promised that electing him would bring change to the world and would be the moment when the waters begin to recede and the planet begins to heal. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want those kinds of expectations. A few days ago his campaign began to actively try and reduce expectations, saying that because of the economy they wouldn’t be able to achieve everything they had planned on. Managing people’s expectations will be a major challenge for the Obama amdinistration.
3. Finally, a Rasmussen poll out yesterday finds that 51% of Americans believe the media was actively trying to help Obama win and 7% felt that they were trying to help McCain win. The American public, at least, believes that the media was actively working to elect Obama. They did so by blaming the financial crisis on Republicans and by hiding Obama’s record from the public. The problem for the media in the next election cycle is that it becomes harder and harder to convince people that everything is the Republicans’ fault. That won’t stop them from trying, of course, but convincing Americans, who per the Rasmussen survey already know the media is biased against the right, that a recession in November of 2010 is still Bush’s fault, is going to be a harder and harder sell.  Maybe even beyond the scope of the liberal press.

I love my country too much to hope for Obama to fail. As much as I believe his policies are foolish and that the public was never given the information they needed to understand him, unfortunately now America’s security, and indeed the world’s security, are tied up in the fortunes of a man who’s never run so much as a small Alaska town of 6,000.  I pray that he gets some good advisors and gets a handle on the egotism that caused him to promise the electorate that he would “heal the planet”. If he thinks that the sheer force of his charisma is going to protect this nation more than military strength, then we’re in for a world of pain. And the US media which protected him from scrutiny and failure in the campaign have no influence on whether his actions lead to a rise in global terrorism or to Iran aquiring nukes.

But if the people who so carefully stage-managed Obama in this election now surround him with people who have the experience we’d normally get from a President, then we can all hope that Obama will listen to them, follow their advice, and continue to deliver stirring speeches that will move people to tears. And in the end, he’ll still get credit for any success that comes of it.

But when the left considers where next to overreach, they should think about those 371,000 voters and whether Obama might have been unable to persuade them without his never-again $500+ Million advantage. Obama can choose to govern as though he had 90% support and that America is as hard-left as he is, and he’ll likely get the same rebuke in 2010 as Clinton got in 1994.  Or he can govern as though, with tremendous help from the media, from his financing decision and from the economic crisis, he was able to squeak out a 52% majority and come within 371,000 votes of defeat.  The people he chooses to surround himself with, the policies he chooses to pursue and the taxes he chooses to impose will be the clearest indication of which path he has chosen.

The Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton

Good words for today I think . . .

I am hurt but I am not slain.
I’ll lay me down and bleed awhile,
Then I’ll rise and fight again.

I'm calling it for McCain

I’ve got to get up in a few hours to go volunteer on election day, but I want to go on record here with something that I’ve been saying for weeks but just haven’t had time to write up.

The polls this year have been, whether through incompetence or malfeasance, utterly useless. I think this is related to a few things:

1. Tendency for Obama supporters to *really* like to talk about their having been saved by The One. Think about it, how many Obama supporters have you been approached by with breathless stories of their pending salvation. On the other hand, how many McCain supporters did you only find out were McCain supporters when it came up some other way. The numbers of people who are declining to talk to pollsters this year is huge.
2. Social conformity. There’s a great article linked from Zombietime which describes not only how this works, but why it doesn’t matter. In any case, it’s driven by the unprecedented ferocity of the Obamacons attacks on any dissenting voice. Fortunately, for the time being, the Democrats in Congress only want to rob workers of their secret ballots. They’ll come after voters after that, but at the moment American voters will be alone in their polling booths.
3. Extension of media bias.  Most of these polls are sponsored by the same news organizations that have spent the last two years trying to convince us that Obama had already won. Polls are not clear mathematics. They, like the temperature prediction models that create global warming alarmism, are based on highly subjective equasions and weightings which try to predict turnout.  This year, they are overwhelmingly weighted toward a Democratic turnout model which looks nothing like the past. In a nutshell, they’re based on the assumption that all those first-time voters who turned up to put President Gore and President Kerry into office will turn up this year in massive numbers. What do you think?

Here’s the real reason The One has been encouraging all three of these things. To get you to stay home.  If you believe your candidate is going to lose in a landslide, then why bother showing up to cast your lone ballot.  But first of all, we know better.  And second of all, first time voters don’t.  The same forces that are supposed to keep conservatives at home out of despair will more likely keep liberals at home chilling their champagne.

And here’s the proof.  Both campaigns have excellent internal polling mechanisms that should be as reliable and accurate as anything out there. There’s no reason for a campaign to feed itself biased data even if it encourages the media to feed biased data to the public.  The campaigns use this internal polling to determine where they have the best shot at winning.

And when you look where BO, McCain and Palin have been hanging out these last few days, a lot of it is in places that those media polls say Obama’s already got sealed up tight.  So why would Obama be spending his precious last few campaign days in Pennsylvania, a traditionally blue state, if the polls preducting a landslide for him are accurate.

Answer: he wouldn’t, and the polls are anything but accurate.

All you have to do is vote today. So. Go. Vote!! And tell your conservative friends to do the same!!  Oh, and make sure your Obama friends know that if the poll lines are too long they can cast their ballots by text message through the American Idol numbers.  😉

Update: OK, you may have already heard this, but apparently my predictions above were not precisely correct. 😉 That said, see the post above for why this election feels a whole lot closer than it should have been given Obama’s structural advantages.

Campbell Brown, closet satirist?

Sometimes I think the zero marginal cost of CNN or another news outlet publishing one more opinion may not be a universally good thing.  Campbell Brown’s piece today may actually be foolish enough to merit a read for humor’s sake.  Brown is proposing that both campaigns stop spending money on ads and donate their money to food banks for the next three weeks.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/16/campbell.brown.negative.ads/index.html

First off, she keeps mentioning that they are going to spend $30 M per week, not mentioning that Obama is outspending McCain 2, 3 or 4 to 1 because he broke his pledge to take public financing.  And for someone who has been so clearly and openly in the tank for Obama for so long now, is it not supposed to occur to us that she waited until her candidate was ahead in the polls before she proposes her idea?  Why didn’t she suggest this great idea back after the Republican Convention? There were still hungry people before the current economic crisis.  Did she just not care because those were poor people, as opposed to middle class people now facing trouble?  Imagine all the money we could have redirected (sort of like spreading the wealth around) if we’d started in September!

Again, not that I think it was meant as an actual suggestion, but from McCain’s perspective what’s the better way to help America? Is it to abandon his quest for the White House, buy soup and sandwiches for a few weeks, and allow an outright socialist to come into office and tax us into the next Great Depression? Or does it seem more prudent to fight like hell to become this nation’s leader, and apply tried and true American principles to clean up government, enable American innovation and grow our economy out of this mess which socialism (CRA, subprime mortgages, Fannie/Freddie) created in the first place.

Hmmm . . . let me think about that one for a minute.

The Obama Gas Law

How many people can you distance yourself from before you’re technically back in bed with the first one?

I think it was probably in some high school chemistry class that a teacher was describing the behavior of a gas.  The molecules would essentially “distance themselves” from one another by constantly bouncing back and forth until they reached an equilibrium spacing.  They were still bounding around, I suppose, but they’d optimized the distances between each molecule to equilibrate the pressure.

I started thinking of that today when Obama added another set of close associates to his list of people he barely knows.  Let’s recap (and feel free to comment if I’ve missed any).

• There was Tony Rezko, convicted felon, who bought the property next to Obama’s on the same day and from the same seller as Obama bought his, but at remarkably a much higher price (Obama paid a surprisingly low price)
• There was Jeremiah “G– D— America”, Obama’s “spiritual mentor”, whose sermons he listened to for 20 years, one sermon of whose Obama borrowed from to name his book. Until he decided that Wright’s racism and obvious hatred of America were despicable and he quit the church
• There was William Ayers, the admitted domestic terrorist and flag stomper, who hired Obama to the only actual managerial job Obama’s ever held, and with whom Obama distributed between $50 and $160 MM dollars to Chicago schools to teach radical ideology to children. They sat on boards together, launched O’s political career together (in Ayers’ living room), but in reality O finds Ayers despicable.
• And now, today, like clockwork, it’s ACORN.  Never mind that O represented them as a lawyer. Never mind that Obama helped train their staff. Never mind that O’s campaign paid $800,000 to ACORN and mischaracterized it in violation of election laws until he was caught and fixed it. Now that ACORN is being investigated for voter registration fraud (and possible vote fraud) in between 11 and 13 states, wouldn’t you know it, O never new the guys.

Would anyone else out there actually find it far more refreshing and sincere if Obama said something like the following:

People of America, Chicago is a rough and tumble place and I’m a politician who wants to do great things for this country. When I came to Chicago I saw that not all the people who held political power had the kinds of honorable background that, to be frank, someone like John McCain has accumulated over a lifetime of service.  In fact, some of them have said things or done things that I found downright outrageous. But you know what, the world is also filled with people who’ve done and said things I find outrageous. I could have avoided all of them, associated only with others who share my view of America as a shining city on a hill (hat tip: Reagan), but I’d never have gotten anywhere and would never have had the chance to make the lives of the people of Chicago, of Illinois, and of America better.  As President I’ll need to work with leaders around the world who I might detest. As a rising star in Chicago politics I had to work with them as well. I’ve proven throughout my career that I can work with them without becoming one of them. Send me to Washington and I’ll do the same thing to get done what needs to get done to make our world safer and more secure.

Period. End of story.

But, lacking the political conviction or moral compass to stand by his associations, he instead just bounces this way and that, denying this friendship, disavowing that political mentor, disclaiming his “spiritual mentor.”  All the while, just like that gas, bouncing this way and that, afraid at every turn about what other foolish relationships he’s forged.

Who knows, maybe now 21 days out from the election he’s finally reached equilibrium, distanced himself from everyone and he can stay there floating alone and run out the clock.  But as with a gas, when the pressure increases the motion increases and inevitably he’s going to bounce back into someone else. At least, let’s hope so.

Why I think Obama would be wrong for America

I had an interesting exchange recently with someone who wanted to understand why I was not as taken by the Obama juggernaut as a lot of people are. She feels, to her credit I think, that if we don’t understand one another’s viewpoints better then the whole democratic experiment here is headed somewhere we don’t want it to head . . .

I wonder whether it’s truly more rancorous than it was 20 years ago or whether we are just prone to forget the rancor.  I do recall when Reagan died that a lot of commentators pointed out how some of the Democrats who remembered him so kindly had excoriated him when he was President. If our next Administration does not foul up the seedlings of democracy that have been planted in the Middle East then I believe that in 20 or 30 years Bush will be credited with ending Islamic terrorism in the same way that Reagan is credited by most thinkers today as having brought about the end of Communism.

Which gets to one of the core reasons why I could never cast a ballot for Obama.  I believe very strongly in American exceptionalism. That is, I don’t just think America is a really neat place. I think it’s a beacon of hope to billions around the world and an incredibly successful experiment in what true freedom looks like. As such, we have a responsibility to do whatever we can to support freedom and democracy elsewhere.

I think plenty of Obama’s actions would lead one to conclude that he does not share this same view of America, from his political associations with William Ayers to the 20 years he spent in the pews of a “spiritual mentor” who, it’s got to be clear even to Obama supporters, hates America and hates white people (that is, Wright does, not that Obama does).  I conclude that Obama views America as a deeply flawed place, one that owes an apology to the rest of the world for all the wrongs we’ve done.  I not only believe this is a deeply wrongheaded view, but also one that bodes poorly for the longest-burning beacon of freedom in the world.

Israel, for example, is the one true democracy in the Middle East. As such, and because of the historical wrongs perpetrated against her people, America has been a stalwart friend to her. Iran, on the other hand, has vowed to actively seek Israel’s destruction. It’s leader, who’s called Israel a “stinking corpse”, is actively pursuing nuclear weapons. Barack Obama has vowed, on multiple occasions to meet with this dictator, as well as those of Syria, North Korea, etc.  To bestow upon them the honor and prestige of a face-to-face meeting with the President of the United States, without requiring any precondition in advance.

Obama has since perhaps recognized the foolishness of this plan, but rather than change his mind or acknowledge that he was wrong, both of which would reveal how inexperienced and naive he is, he just denies it.  I know a lot of his supporters might not have seen the original debate (I watched it live) so there’s a very good video compilation here which juxtaposes Obama calling McCain a liar for claiming Obama would meet with these dictators and Obama uttering exactly what McCain claims he said.  It’s 3 minutes of video and it’s really worth watching.

Here’s what Jesse Jackson was saying last week to the World Policy Forum in France:

The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where “decades of putting Israel’s interests first” would end.

Jackson believes that, although “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades” remain strong, they’ll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House.

“Obama is about change,” Jackson told me in a wide-ranging conversation. “And the change that Obama promises is not limited to what we do in America itself. It is a change of the way America looks at the world and its place in it.”

I’m not suggesting Jackson is an official surrogate for Obama, but he’s a supporter and a longtime associate. And at the very least one must ask if there’s anything Obama has said or done which would suggest that Jackson is misspeaking (for example, Obama’s not renounced or denied any of Jackson’s comments).

For some Americans, this view of America as needing to back away from a leadership position in the world and back away from our strong support of Israel will match their own views. If it does, then Obama is clearly the candidate for them. For me, they are as far from my views as any could be. They make me recoil and they spell the end of any serious effort to combat the hopelessness and mismanagement of corrupt dictatorships in the Middle East by supporting freedom and democracy. Undermining those regimes and replacing them with free nations and free people is the only clear path to our long-term security. It’s one Bush has pursued at the expense of all his political capital and considerable approval, and it’s why I support his Presidency and could not support Obama’s.

For the record, I understand why others feel differently.  After 8 years of someone who doesn’t speak very well and who seems to anger other countries, there’s a lot of people who are going to be drawn to Obama. And frankly, if the world were inexorably headed toward a collision with the Sun in 6 months and there was nothing anyone could do about it, I’d vote for Obama because he’d make everyone feel hopeful and the long-term strategic implications of his naivete would never have time to manifest themselves.  But I have 2 little girls who are going to inherit those implications and are, G-d willing, going to be around in 70 or 80 years still living with them.  Nothing I’ve seen from Obama makes me think he has the right judgement to make that a safe world for them, and enough of his actions and associations make me seriously doubt he shares my view of America’s place in the world.

Every four years . . .

Every four years my time spent reading, watching the news and trading emails with politically active friends across the aisle ramps up dramatically.  This year even more so than in 2004, the stakes feel incredibly high.  I thought I’d post a few thoughts here across the course of the last month of the Presidential campaign.  It really is a truly amazing country that every four years for well over two centuries has managed to pull back from whatever is the crisis of the day and, in a process filled sometimes with mud, occasionally with bile and yes, every once in awhile with a little bit of grace, selects its leader for the next little bit of time.

I certainly have my strong preference in this upcoming election, as do many, but I’m not one to state that so and so will ruin our country.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t believe that one of the candidates is woefully ill-equipped to handle the job. I certainly do think he is. But the job is bigger than either one of them. And if you think about it, at least once, and (depending on the order they came in) possibly several times in our nation’s history we’ve been led by “the worst President (up to that point) in history”. And yet, by virtue of the fact that we’re heading into elections again, we survived. And we will again.

Because more so than any other country on earth, the “leader of the free world” starts the job with his days already numbered.  FDR notwithstanding you get 1461 if you fail your performance review. 2922 if you pass. And then you’re out. You don’t linger on the scene like Putin’s post Presidential leadership in Russia. You build a library, you build some houses. If you’re really lucky you might end up the First Gentleman. But your time in the big chair is limited and the power, ultimately, rests with the people you serve.

So, I’ll do whatever I can in the month ahead to try and secure the leadership America deserves. But if we end up with someone else I believe we’ll make it through.

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