The View from Right Field

Mitt Romney > Barack Obama

Other than a few stories about the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, most of the political news (as opposed to news about Sandy) in the last couple of weeks (or more) has been what I call “horse race” stories; i.e., who is leading who and where and by how much.  Personally, I don’t find all those stories all that useful.  They are interesting, I suppose (especially if your candidate is deemed to be winning), but useful?  Not really.

And the problem is that are some important issues in this presidential election.  Perhaps the most important issue, and the most important difference between the candidates, is that Barack Obama believes in government much more than Mitt Romney does.  Barack Obama really thinks that government can solve a lot of our problems.  He really believes that, with enough money and enough government action, things will get better.  He really does seem to believe that more government is better and that more government will make us better off.

I don’t believe that, and neither does Mitt Romney.  And therein lies the reason this election is important.

I think that Barack Obama would, if he could, keep spending high (he calls it “investing”) and continue to increase what government does.  The problem is that, at some point, we’re going to run out of money.  Let me mention a couple of the reasons why.  First, eventually, we won’t be able to find anybody to lend to us.  So far, we’ve been lucky.  Other countries have been even worse off than we have.  And they didn’t have a printing press.  But someday, it’s going to be our turn.  And cutting back then is going to hurt a lot more than starting to address the problem now.

Second, more and more government will mean less and less private economic growth, and it is private economic growth that ultimately pays for government.  If we don’t have enough real economic growth, see number one above.

What we need is relatively less government spending and more tax revenue (not higher tax rates, more tax revenue).  But Barack Obama won’t get us there.  His main idea for controlling spending is to cut defense, and his main idea for increasing revenue is to increase tax rates on the rich.  This won’t work because you can’t cut defense spending enough and because the rich don’t have enough money to pay for all the spending.

Mitt Romney believes that we need to control spending (more than just defense) and that we need to reform taxes by broadening the tax base and lowering the relative rates.  Done right, which I think Mitt Romney will do, this will increase tax revenues while not discouraging private economic activity.

I know that there are some Republicans who think that any tax reform has to be “revenue neutral”; i.e., any increased revenue from broadening the tax base has to be exactly offset by lowering tax rates.  I disagree.  Until we can get the deficit down and until we can get some of the debt paid off, we need more revenue, so the tax revenue “lost” by lowering tax rates is going to have to be less than the tax revenue gained by broadening the base.

Barack Obama isn’t going to do any of this.  He already ignored this idea when it was presented to him by his own deficit commission.  He likes tax subsidies and specialized tax deductions and credits too much to engage in any serious base broadening.  And raising tax rates on people he calls rich seems to be something he really believes in (even, as he said in 2008, if it doesn’t increase tax revenue).

We’ve got to get the deficit down.  We’ve get the debt down.  To do this, we need relatively less government spending and more tax revenue.  I think there is a much better chance of getting this done with Mitt Romney as President than Barack Obama.

Follow-Up on the “3:00 AM Call” from Benghazi

According to Jake Tapper at ABC News this morning:

“In an interview that aired today, President Obama said that ‘if we find out that there was a big breakdown and somebody didn’t do their job” regarding the attack on the U.S. outposts in Benghazi, Libya, ‘then they’ll be held responsible.’”

Okay, will do.

Bill Clinton Is Going to Minnesota for Obama

Is the Obama campaign worried about Minnesota?  Wow.

The “3:00 AM Call” from Benghazi Wasn’t Answered

President Obama is very lucky the attack on our consulate in Benghazi on September 11 happened when it did.  The more and more we find out about it, the worse the President looks.  Obviously, the Administration’s first statements, that it was the result of protests against some internet movie, were just silly.  The Administration is now trying to say is that they didn’t really know and that that was their best guess at the time.  Well, if they didn’t know, why didn’t they say that, instead of giving us an answer that almost seemed to blame the First Amendment for not allowing us to ban internet movies that disrespect Islam?

There are now reports seeming to indicate that we knew about the attack while it was going on, but we did not try to do something to help the people in Benghazi.  The response was that we didn’t know for sure what was going on (which I understand), so we couldn’t do anything (which I don’t understand).

The fact we didn’t know for sure what was going on, doesn’t mean we didn’t know our people in Benghazi were under attack.  And it doesn’t mean that we couldn’t do something.  If our diplomats are under attack, and if we have forces in the area (which in this case we did), we should send them in.  They’ll figure out what to do.  They’re smart.

The thing that I find the most amazing is that, apparently, after the attack on the consulate was over, and after the terrorists had left the consulate, Ambassador Stevens was found, by other Libyans, alive but unconscious.  He was taken to a hospital, but the doctors could not save him.

Is what I just said clear?  Ambassador Stevens was found alive, though unconscious.  I understand the Libyans couldn’t save him, but what if we had sent forces, with medics, in at the beginning?  Could we have found Ambassador Stevens earlier?  Could our medics have done something more to save him?  We don’t know – because we didn’t try. 

President Obama was right to go in after Osama Bin Laden.  And he deserves credit for making that decision.  (Though it might be a little more impressive if he didn’t brag about it so much.)

President Obama deserves absolutely no credit for what we didn’t do in Benghazi.  A quick decision was needed.  It wasn’t made.  And we’ll never know if it would have helped.

Vacation / Break

As I mentioned, I will be on vacation through Monday, October 22, 2012.  We are going to Portugal for a week and a half.  I would imagine the bullfights there are a lot like our Presidential debates - except more humane and probably more honest.

Libya and Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy “Experience”

We are going on vacation for about a week and a half in the middle of October, so I will miss the second Presidential debate and will arrive home, fully jet-lagged, on the day of the third.  I expect to miss it, too.  I understand the third debate is to be on foreign policy.  I am sure President Obama thinks that this is his strong suit and that he will do well against Mitt Romney.

I would expect President Obama will say that his experience is important and that Mitt Romney doesn’t have any, maybe even using a variation of the International House of Pancakes joke used against Bill Clinton in 1992. 

It is possible that President Obama thinks Mitt Romney will have a problem with inexperience because of all the problems President Obama had during his first year in office.  For example, it took him months to figure out what to do in Afghanistan, which was surprising since he called it a necessary war during the 2008 campaign.  And then when he did decide, his decision, to send in troops and to tell the other side when he was going to pull them out, was naïve at best.

But even since then, you have to wonder about his decisions and whether, if this is what comes from what he will call “experience,” we wouldn’t be better off with somebody else for the next four years.

Consider what, until a month ago, I am sure President Obama would have called one of his signal successes: Libya.  Obviously, it is a little hard to call Libya a success right now.  We did a lousy job of providing security to our diplomats in Libya.  According to Jake Tapper at ABC News:

“ABC News has obtained an internal State Department email from May 3, 2012, indicating that the State Department denied a request from the security team at the Embassy of Libya to retain a DC-3 airplane in the country to better conduct their duties. …

No one has yet to argue that the DC-3 would have definitively made a difference for the four Americans killed that night. The security team in question, after all, left Libya in August.

But the question … is whether officials in Washington, D.C., specifically at the State Department, were as aware as they should have been about the deteriorating security situation in Libya, and whether officials were doing everything they could to protect Americans in that country.”

Eli Lake in The Daily Beast reported that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi had been bombed two other times this year, including one attack that blew a hole in the perimeter gate

And since then, the consulate grounds have been so poorly protected that it was CNN that found Ambassador Stevens’ personal journal on the consulate grounds and Washington Post reporters found other sensitive documents just lying around.  A State Department spokesman said:

“‘Securing the site has obviously been a challenge.  We had to evacuate all U.S. government personnel the night of the attack.  After the attack, we requested help securing the site, and we continue to work with the Libyan government on this front.’”

I am sorry.  That is not acceptable.  Just get it done.

But even before these events, how much of a success was Libya?  The Obama administration made a big deal in 2009 of its intention to “reset” our relations with Russia.  But then they took a United Nations Security Council resolution passed for the purpose of protecting civilians in Benghazi and used it as a justification to overthrow the government of Moammar Gaddafi.  Regardless of whether overthrowing Colonel Gaddafi was a good idea, Russia felt deceived by the use of the Security Council resolution for this purpose.  If resetting relations with Russia was important, was what we did in Libya worth it?  I don’t think we know yet, but I wonder how much thought the Obama administration gave to that question when they decided to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi and how much President Obama’s “experience” informed their decision.

Finally, consider some of the second-level consequences of our overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi.  According to The New York Times on September 26:

“Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday suggested there was a link between the Qaeda franchise in North Africa and the attack at the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the American ambassador and three others. …

Mrs. Clinton made her remarks at a special United Nations meeting on the political and security crisis in the parts of North Africa known as the Maghreb and the Sahel, particularly in northern Mali, which has been overrun by Islamic extremists since a military coup helped lead to the division of that country this year.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has long operated in the region, she said, and was now exploiting a haven in Mali to export extremism and terrorist violence to neighbors like Libya.”

What the article did not say was why and when northern Mali was overrun by Islamic extremists and when the military coup occurred.  The fact is many of the “Islamic extremists” who overran northern Mali came from Libya.  Malian mercenaries and jihadists had gone to Libya while Colonel Gaddafi was in power.  When he was overthrown, they were forced to leave.  When they returned to Mali, they joined with local jihadists to cause the unrest in northern Mali.  The inability of the democratically-elected government of Mali to deal with this unrest led the Malian armed forces to stage a coup.  The coup, however, has not quelled the Islamic unrest in northern Mali.  (See here.)

Look at the order of events: (i) Gaddafi overthrown; (ii) Malian mercenaries and jihadists return to Mali; (iii) Malian mercenaries and jihadists increase unrest in northern Mali; (iv) democratic Malian government overthrown; (v) security crisis in Mali worsens.

Please understand that I am not saying it is the United States’ fault that these things happened in Mali.  The people in Mali are responsible for what they do.  But did the Obama administration think through what might happen in Libya, and elsewhere, if they overthrew Colonel Gaddafi?  Were the decisions in Libya last year and this any better than then-Senator Barack Obama’s campaign promises in 2008 about the necessary war in Afghanistan?

President Obama will claim his experience in foreign policy is a reason to vote for him instead of Mitt Romney.  It doesn’t seem like it to me.

2012 Cubs: A Few Thoughts on the 2013 Cubs

2012 is over, so what about 2013?  First, Theo has pretty much written 2013 off, though Tom Ricketts/Crane Kenney are still going to charge full price – plus whatever extra they can squeeze out of the fans.  Re that “extra”: Look for increases to come in concessions, etc., as opposed to ticket prices – or at least I hope that’s where the increases will come because I can avoid them there.

On the field, I would refer you to my post of June 10, 2012.  Since then, Anthony Rizzo has come up and lots of starting pitchers were traded.  So what – so what about 2013, that is.

In the infield, the Cubs are set at first base, second base and shortstop.  Third base is a big hole, probably the second biggest hole on the team (after starting pitching).  Josh Vitters isn’t ready and will be starting the season at Iowa.  He could easily use a whole year at AAA.  Something more than Luis Valbuena is needed.  As to what we can find, I will leave that to people being paid $18,000,000 for five years.

Speaking of $18,000,000 (in this case for one year), what about the outfield?  David DeJesus is a solid choice for one spot.  With Soriano’s improvement on defense (thank you, Dave McKay), Alfonso would be fine in left – unless we can get something worthwhile in return.  Trading him is certainly not just a salary dump.  But Brett Jackson will be starting the season in Iowa, too.  He’s not ready yet (and wasn’t ready when we brought him up).  He might still get there, but we need somebody else to start the year for us.  As for Bryan LaHair, I hope he winds up someplace he can play.  He deserves it.

Which brings up the bench.  Help is needed, but the bench is often the easiest place to improve at a fair cost.

Welington Castillo is good enough behind the plate.  With the starting pitching so bad, you can’t worry about other areas unnecessarily. 

As for starting pitching, we have Jeff Samardzija plus Travis Wood – and Matt Garza (until we trade him).  That’s terrible.  I know; I watched it this year.  We need at least two decent mid-rotation starters, plus some backups.  And that’s just to avoid total embarrassment.  I don’t know if we have somebody at Iowa, like Casey Coleman*, but it can’t be like September.  And if any of the new starters do turn out good, I hope we don’t have another pitching sale on July 31, like we did this year, though Theo Epstein has said it is possible.  If there is another one of those, Tom Rickets/Crane Kenney need to do something for the ticketholders other than the mealy-mouthed gobbledygook they normally give out.

A couple of relievers might need to replaced (they usually do), but the starting pitching is so bad and is in so much need of improvement, that it’s hardly worth talking about relief.  I will give the Epstein crew one compliment.  At the Cubs Convention last January, Theo talked about trying to identify good players who are having a terrible spring and who might be available cheap at the end of spring training.  That’s how we got Shawn Camp, and he was great.

So what about next year?  Unlike 1963 and 1967 (when we were over .500 after seasons of 100+ losses), we don’t have a Williams-Santo-Banks core.  And unlike 1967, we don’t have those to supplement the core waiting in the wings.  Still, with lots of luck and a couple of decent starters, we might finish close to .500.  That wouldn’t be great but it would be better than this year.  It’s more than Theo is planning on, but I can’t help hoping.

--------
* Sometimes it seems that, when a new regime takes over, they like the new players they bring in more than the talent that was already there.  It’s the new guys who get the chances, not the holdovers.  I don’t know if that is what happened to Casey Coleman.  He certainly was good at the end of the 2010 season.  I hope he gets a chance next spring.  He wouldn’t be any worse than what we had in September.

Update (10/8/12 11:05 pm): Fixed a couple of typos inthe seventh paragraph. 

Barack Obama Doesn’t Seem to Like Democracy

Barack Obama does not seem to like democracy all that much.  Actually, let me re-phrase that.  It’s not that Barack Obama doesn’t like elections (as long as he wins) and campaigns (as long as he is treated deferentially and not asked a lot of hard questions) or even democracy itself (as long as it does want he wants).  Rather, it seems like he doesn’t like the kind of constitutional democracy we have that puts limits on what one person or one branch of government can do without the consent of other people or other branches.  And when I say that he doesn’t seem to like/appreciate our kind of constitutional democracy, I am saying this because of the way he has been acting recently.

When Republicans in Congress wouldn’t go along with President Obama’s ideas for changing the “No Child Left Behind” law, the President got upset, calling them obstructionist, etc.  Of course, “No Child Left Behind” has been up for reauthorization since 2007, and President Obama and the Democrats didn’t try to change it in 2009-2010 when they controlled both houses of Congress.

The President finally made his proposals to change No Child Left Behind in 2011.  Not surprisingly, Republicans who were elected, in effect, because voters didn’t like what President Obama was doing, did not agree with some of the President’s proposals.  So the President had his Secretary of Education tell the states that, if they would agree to comply with a new set of rules, which were, in effect, the changes the President wanted to make to No Child Left Behind, he would give them money and a waiver from complying with the old law.*  In other words, Congress wouldn’t change No Child Left Behind like President Obama wanted, but that was no problem.  President Obama effectively repealed it on his own, by issuing new regulations and waiving the provisions of the old law.

In the case of the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the President was apparently worried that the Senate might not approve his nominees (even though in the case of two of the nominees, their nomination had only gone to the Senate three weeks before), so he appointed them by “recess appointments.” (Also here and here.) The only problem was that the Senate, following precedent (not long precedent, to be sure, but still precedent), didn’t think it had gone into recess.  Every couple of days a few senators would meet so there would be no recess.  The President didn’t like this, so he decided, on his own, that the Senate was effectively in recess, regardless of what the Senate said, and that he could make recess appointments.  Eventually, the courts will decide whether President Obama gets to decide whether the Senate is in recess or not, but in the meantime it’s another example of President Obama’s view that he can do whatever he wants.

Here is another:  Some people did not like certain of the amendments made to the 1996 welfare reform law when it was reauthorized in 2005, and there have been efforts to change the law ever since.  But Congress, even the 2009-2010 Democratic Congress, hasn’t done so.  Now the Department of Health and Human Services is doing it on its own, issuing new rules to make some of the changes Congress wouldn’t pass.

In June the Department of Homeland Security announced that, in certain cases, it would no longer deport illegal immigrants under the age of 30 who came to the United States as children.  (Also, here.)  This was part of the DREAM Act that never passed Congress – and that President Obama didn’t push all that hard.  But whether President Obama tried to get the law passed or not, the point is that Congress didn’t pass it, so the President shouldn’t be implementing provisions of the DREAM Act by telling his appointees to ignore the law as it is in effect.

Here is what Politico reported in June:

“A White House official said the strategy is the result of a stalemate in Washington.

‘We work to achieve our policy goals in the most effective and appropriate way possible,’ the official said. ‘Often times, Congress has blocked efforts (ie [No Child Left Behind] and DREAM) and we look to pursue other appropriate means of achieving our policy goals. Sometimes this makes for less-than-ideal policy situations — such as the action we took on immigration — but the president isn’t going to be stonewalled by politics, he will pursue whatever means available to do business on behalf of American people.’”

In an interview with Time magazine reported in early September, the President himself said the same thing:

“‘Where Republicans refuse to cooperate on things that I know are good for the American people, I will continue to look for ways to do it administratively and work around Congress. And a good example of that is, for example, making sure that homeowners around the country can take advantage of these historically low rates and refinance. There’s no reason Congress can’t move forward and at almost no cost to the federal government really boost the housing market and our economy. But if Congress won’t do it, we’ll keep on looking for ways to get that done without legislation.’”

But the point is that democracy means following proper procedures.  The Constitution sets out how laws are supposed to be passed.  The Constitution doesn’t say that the President, or anybody else, can do whatever he or she wants just because they “know” it is “good for the American people”.  In the United States we have rules to follow.  Those rules are what protect our liberty.  In the United States the ends do not justify the means.  If a President can’t get Congress to do what he wants, then he doesn’t get to do what he wants.  That’s democracy.  That’s a government of laws, not of men.

Another example: In March of this year, President Obama told then-President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia, with respect to a missile defense agreement between the United States and Russia:  “[I]t’s important for him [i.e., Vladimir Putin] to give me space. … This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

It is comments from like these by President Obama, plus the ways he has already ignored Congress and the law in the last couple of years, that make me worry about a second term for President Obama.  President Obama doesn’t seem to understand that Congressional “obstructionism” may really be the voice of the people telling him they don’t what to do what he is proposing.  And he doesn’t understand that, under our democracy, the fact Congress won’t do what he wants, doesn’t mean that he can disregard the rules and do what he wants anyway because he “knows” what's “good for the American people.”

-----------
* Motoko Rich, "'No Child' Law Whittled Down by White House," The New York Times, July 6, 2012; Laura Meckler and Stephanie Banchero, "Obama Rewrites 'No Child' Law," The Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2011.

2012 Cubs and the Quest for 63: They Didn’t Make It

With last night’s 3 to 0 loss to the Houston Astros, the Cubs lost their 100th game of the season – for just the third time in team history.  At least they won’t match the 103 losses they had in 1962 and 1966.  With only two games left, the most the 2012 Cubs can lose is 102.

There was one nice story at last night’s game, though.  Back on August 20, a Lutheran minister fron Sussex, Wisconsin, was attending a Cubs-Brewers game at Miller Field.  Though he was from Wisconsin, the minister was a Cubs fan, and in the fifth inning he caught a home run ball hit by the Cubs’ Josh Vitters.  It was Josh’s first major league home run, and he naturally wanted the ball.  Pastor Peter Bender said fine, he just wanted a chance to sing the National Anthem at Wrigley Field.  Pastor Bender sang the National Anthem last night, and he did a great job.  (Here, here and here.)

Afghanistan Update: Sigh

In August I wrote about reports that another new general was being appointed for Afghanistan.  Well, now it is official.  The appointment of Marine General Joseph Dunford to replace General John Allen is being announced.

Instead of repeating what I said in my prior post, I have another thought.  I would love to be able to go into the future (maybe 20 or 30 years), so I could read the histories of Afghanistan and find out the “real” story of all of these appointments and changes of leadership in Afghanistan during the Obama administration.

It is becoming pretty clear that Barack Obama doesn’t really care about Afghanistan.  Apparently, it was more of a club/issue to beat John McCain/George W. Bush with in the 2008 campaign than anything else.  (In one bizarre way, I sort of hope President Obama didn’t care.  If he did/does care, and this is what happens, that might be even scarier.)

Look at all the top generals we have gone through in Afghanistan:  David McKiernan, Stanley McChrystal, David Petraeus, John Allen, and now Joseph Dunford.  And that is all in four years. 

And then there is Ryan Crocker.  He came out of retirement to be ambassador to Afghanistan in 2011, but he resigned a year later.  Ambassador Crocker said he was resigning for health reasons, but it is still unfortunate that we have not been able to keep good people in Afghanistan.

And that is why I would like to go into the future (thinking about it, 20 to 30 years might not be enough; it might need to be 50 years): To find out the real story of Barack Obama and Afghanistan.