The View from Right Field

Compromise On the Way To the Fiscal Cliff

Both President Obama and Speaker of the House Boehner are talking compromise as we approach the fiscal cliff.  But I wonder.  President Obama says he is willing to compromise, but then he says that the election shows that people want higher taxes on the rich.  Speaker Boehner says he is willing to compromise on more getting more tax revenue, but he doesn’t want to raise tax rates on anybody.

It reminds of a scene from a play called “Bleacher Bums,” a nine-inning comedy about life in the Wrigley Field bleachers, circa 1977.  Two of the characters, Decker and Zig, are discussing a wager on the day’s game:

“DECKER. Well I’m takin’ the Cubs.  So what kinds odds you want, Zig?  What kinda odds?
ZIG.  What the hell you talkin’ about – you’re takin’ the Cubs.  You know who you’re talkin’ to?  You’re takin’ the Cubs.
DECKER.  I know … But –
ZIG.  I’m takin’ the Cubs!
DECKER.  Come on Zig, last homestand I let you –
ZIG.  I’m not gonna bet on those rummies out there.  You wanta bet on the Cards –
DECKER.  I can’t, it’s bad luck for me to bet on the Cards.
ZIG.  I don’t bet against the Cubs.
DECKER.  I’m not gonna bet on the Cardinals.
ZIG.  So don’t.
DECKER.  What does that mean, Zig?
ZIG.  Compromise.  Do it my way.”*

If this is what President Obama and Speaker Boehner mean by “compromise,” we could be in for trouble.

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* Bleacher Bums, 1977, 1980, 1992, p. 16.

Note: For TV and film buffs, I note that “Decker” was first played by Joe Mantegna and “Zig” was first played by Dennis Franz.

A Republican’s Thoughts on Tuesday’s Election in Illinois

As much of the rest of the nation was experiencing a bit of a close election, Illinois, and especially Illinois Republicans, were experiencing the results of the 2010 Illinois Republican gubernatorial primary.  Republicans could have won Illinois’ governorship in the fall of 2010 with Kirk Dillard as their candidate.  But in the primary that year, too many Republicans decided to vote for the candidate of their heart, instead of a candidate who could win.  And so we lost the governorship.  Since we had no hope of winning either house of the Illinois General Assembly in 2010, by forfeiting the governorship, we gave up any chance we had of having at least some influence in the legislative redistricting.

Now, we see the results of that primary vote:  The new Illinois Senate will have 40 Democrats and 19 Republicans.  The House will have 71 Democrats and 47 Republicans.  That gives both Senate President John Cullerton and Speaker of the House Mike Madigan veto-proof majorities.  More importantly, the Illinois Constitution provides that bills passed after May 31 of one year cannot become effective before May 31 of the following year, unless they are passed on a 3/5 majority.  This is particularly important for budget bills.  If the legislature cannot agree on a budget for the upcoming year by May 31, a 3/5 majority is required to pass the budget bills.  Now, however, both Speaker Madigan and Senate President Cullerton have 3/5 majorities.  They don’t need the Republicans any time.  The Democrats in the legislature can do whatever they want, whenever they want.

While that is sort of depressing, it does have one ever-so-slightly redeeming feature:  It means that Messrs. Madigan and Cullerton now completely own Illinois’ budget problems.  They can’t blame the Republicans for their inability to act on Illinois’s deficit and pension problems because they have the votes.

At the election last week, Messrs. Madigan and Cullerton had a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would have required a 3/5 vote of each house of the legislature to pass increases in pension benefits in the future.  This wouldn’t have done anything to deal with our current problem, but it would have looked good.  But it didn’t pass.  Some people saw through it for the nothing it was, while some public employee unions saw it as the thin edge of the wedge.  As result, the Speaker and the Senate President lost their chance to claim that they had done something.

Now it’s up to Speaker Madigan and Senate President Cullerton to come up with a solution, a real one.  Ever since he lost control of the Illinois House of Representatives in the 1994 election, Speaker Madigan has been all about maintaining his Democratic majority in the House.  At times, it almost seemed like keeping his majority was more important than doing what was needed for Illinois. 

Now it’s time for Speaker Madigan and Senate Cullerton to use their majorities to actually do something for Illinois.  Otherwise why have them?

A Republican’s Thoughts on Tuesday’s Election

First, I think it is unfortunate that President Obama was re-elected, but I do not see it as a disaster for the Republican Party.  The fact is the election was close.  The most recent popular vote count I saw has it 50.4% to 48.1%.  That is not that far apart.  And in the Electoral College, assuming Florida goes for President Obama (as it is leaning), then of the states where the winner received less than 53% of the popular vote, one went for Mitt Romney (North Carolina) and ten, with 121 electoral votes, went for President Obama.

Second, Republicans don’t need to change their principles.  They just need to state them better – and not get distracted by side issues (see, for example, Senate candidates Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana).  I understand that right to life is important, but for pity sakes, figure out how to say it. 

     Also, illegal immigration is wrong, but Republicans are never going to force the millions of people who are already here to leave, splitting families, causing human distress, etc.  We’re not that kind of party or people.  We can be against illegal immigration without being against Hispanics.  We need to figure out how to say it.  (See the prior paragraph.)

Third, as I said above, I think it is unfortunate that President Obama was re-elected.  I previously mentioned (“So What Happens If Barack Obama is Re-Elected”) some of the reasons why.  But as Adam Smith said in 1782, in response to a letter that said England would be ruined because of the loss at Yorktown, “[b]e assured, my young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” 

     So what is going to happen with the upcoming “fiscal cliff”?  Robert Gibb, former Press Secretary for President Obama, said last night on Fox that the House Republicans would have to give in because President Obama won re-election and their approval ratings are so low.  That is just silly.  The House Republicans won, too, so their individual approval ratings are fine.  And they have principles.  They are not going to give them up because the Democratic candidate for President got 2% more of the popular vote than the Republican candidate did.  If President Obama takes this approach, we’re in for trouble.

     Juan Williams, on Fox, said that President Obama might be more flexible now (a la his comment to then-Russian President Medvedev) because he is focusing on his legacy as opposed to re-election.  That is an interesting thought, but there is nothing in President Obama’s past that would lead one to think that will happen.  President Obama is a big government liberal.  Always has been.  I can’t see why he is going to change now.

Fourth, while I did not want President Obama to get re-elected, I am not at all sure how good of a president Mitt Romney would have been.  I remember how excited I was when George W. Bush won in 2000.  But he was not a good president on lots of domestic matters.  He was a big government Republican.  And it took him way too long to figure out what to do in Iraq.  And he never did figure out what to do in Afghanistan.

     I was for Mitt Romney because he wasn’t Barack Obama.  Mitt Romney is clearly a good person, but it seems like he would have come to the presidency with pragmatism, not philosophy.  His pragmatism would have been better than Barack Obama’s*, but probably not as nearly as good as one would have liked.

Fifth, Barack Obama (and our economy) has been the beneficiary of a domestic energy boom that President Obama had nothing to do with.  Fracking, new drilling technologies for oil, etc., are the cause of the boom.  Those aren’t Democratic initiatives.  They’re the free market.  And lots of the Democratic left don’t like them.  Some of them have real concerns.  Others just seem to be pre-disposed to oppose energy.  They want us to use less energy just because.  It’s not cost; it’s not the environment; it’s just what they want.  And since restrictions on these things can be done by the bureaucracy and regulations, I fully expect to see a lot of these restrictions being imposed.

Sixth, the Defense budget is going to take some big hits.  And based on the fact that “you can’t use what you can’t afford to lose”, this is going to limit what presidents (this one and the next couple) can do for some time.

     Tied in with this, expect to see our missile defense systems (against countries like Iran and North Korea) cut back in an effort to appease Vladimir Putin.  It won’t work, but President Obama has already just about said he is going to do it.

Seventh, and finally, negative campaigning works.  I get tired of people complaining about negative ads, and then not voting against the people who use them.  Maybe only one out of 20 people respond to negative ads.  But as long as the 19 out of 20 people who complain about negative ads don’t change their votes to vote against the negative campaigner, the one in 20 who do change their votes as a result of the negative ads, means that candidates will continue to use negative ads.

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* Update (11/8/12 8:10 am):  This sentence should have been worded as follows (I underlined the addition): "His pragmatism would have been better than Barack Obama’s philosophy (or Barack Obama's pragmatism), but probably not as nearly as good as one would have liked."

Mitt Romney: My Thoughts As of October 1, 2012

This post is being written in late September/early October.  I am not posting now (i.e., October 1) because ….  Well, it is pretty obvious why.  With the Democrats and the mainstream media ("MSM"), assuming that is not a redundancy, tearing down Mitt Romney, there is no reason for a Republican to criticize him, too.  He may not be perfect, but as I said before, paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld, you campaign with the Republican you have, not for the one you wish you had.  Therefore, I am setting this up to be published right after the election.  [[November 7:  See here for my post-election comments.]]

Clearly, I do not agree with Mitt Romney on all issues.  Too many of his stands (China bashing on trade, for example) are things that he ought to know better about.  But, unfortunately, sometimes those kinds of positions seem to work with a lot of voters.

On things like energy independence, one’s initial thought is, “come on, it’s not going to happen”.  But then something like fracking comes along, and you sort of wonder.  We won’t be able to produce all of our own energy, but maybe we’ll produce enough of it to be functionally independent, even if not totally independent, of reliance on foreign countries for energy.  (Of course, we’re still dependent on China to finance our national debt.)

The problem, of course, is that running for President is so hard, so time-consuming, and so invasive of one's personal life, that most good people don't want to or can't afford to do it.  (See Mitch Daniels of Indiana for the invasion of one's personal life.  Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota dropped out in 2011, in part, because he didn't want to go into personal debt to finance his campaign.)

Which means that there aren’t always a lot of good candidates to choose from.  I am not all that happy with Mitt Romney, but look at the alternatives we had.  Newt Gingrich.  Herman Cain.  Be serious.  The candidates we had were not the best the Republican Party had to offer, but they were the ones willing to run, and we had to choose from who was running.  (Back to the paraphrase of the Rumsfeld quote.)

Sometimes a dearth of candidates, like all of the Democrats who refused to run against George H.W. Bush in 1992, results in a Bill Clinton, who is a truly excellent politician.  Other times you get people who seem to make too many mistakes.

But, remember, Republican “gaffes” almost always seem to be a bigger deal in the MSM than President Obama’s mistakes.  Compare how much the press played up Mitt Romney’s comment about Britain’s security preparations before the Olympics (I might note that the British did bring in the Army to help with security at the last minute) with the virtual pass Barack Obama got when he called Auschwitz “a Polish death camp”.  “Polish death camp”?!  I am sorry, but that is incompetent.  And President Obama did it in a prepared speech, not in some extemporaneous remarks.  So not only was he incompetent, but his staff was incompetent, too.  And his press secretary brushed it off as no big deal.

But the point is that the MSM let him get away with it.  Which does make it hard to run against him, as Ann Romney appropriately pointed out in late September.

Let me emphasize that I think Mitt Romney is a great man.  His charitable contributions and what he does personally to help people are incredible.  If you needed a friend to rely on in tough times, it would be Mitt Romney.  (More so, I might add, than many other presidents, including Republican ones, who are thought of as really good presidents.)

But just being a good man doesn’t make you a good candidate.  And for a Republican to break through the MSM to the voters, you have to be better than good.  Unfortunately, Mitt Romney might be a good president, but he is probably not a good enough candidate to get there.  And that is too bad because as I wrote [actually “will write”], I am very much afraid Barack Obama is going to wind up doing what he wants without regard to or respect for our democratic structures and procedures.

A long time ago, I wrote that the 2012 presidential election was the Republicans’ to lose.  I am very much afraid we, all of us, are going to do that.

The 16-Year Presidency of George W. Bush

With Barack Obama having won re-election, George W. Bush will, on about March 1, 2013, pass Franklin D. Roosevelt for the longest presidency in American history, at least with respect to responsibility for economic affairs.  Throughout the past campaign, Democrats said that George W. Bush was in charge of the economy – or at least was that everything wrong with the economy was his responsibility, i.e., his fault.  I see no reason why anything in the economy should change any time soon, so early next year George W. Bush will have had responsibility for the economy for a longer time than Franklin Roosevelt’s twelve years, one month and nine days.

And if the economy doesn’t start picking up better than it has been so far by the time of the next presidential election in 2016, the Democratic candidate will at that time, I am sure, regardless of who he or she may be, tell us that it is all George W. Bush’s fault and that all we have to do to fix the economy is elect a Democrat to end George W. Bush’s 16 years of economic failure.

So What Happens If Barack Obama is Re-Elected?

So what is going to happen if President Obama wins re-election on Tuesday?  First, unless there is a total surprise, even if the President is re-elected, the House is still going to be Republicans, and even if the Republicans don’t take control of the Senate, they will have enough Senators that breaking a filibuster is going to be hard.

President Obama has said that he thinks Republicans will work with him in a second term.  I have already stated my view on that question.  It is probable that President Obama and Congress will come up with something to deal with the upcoming “fiscal cliff”.  But beyond that, my guess as to what will pass the next Congress is about zilch.  So will a re-elected President do?  Is he going to accept the fact that he can’t anything through Congress and merely do his best administering the things he already got passed?

Or is he going to lambast the Republicans for obstructionism and then use every maneuver he (or anybody else) can think of to implement his policies through the bureaucracy, regulations, courts and any other way, even though Congress won’t pass them?  I have already talked about how President Obama has done some of this in the last two years (“Barack Obama Doesn’t Seem to Like Democracy”).  I think we would see a lot more of it in a second Obama term.

Respect for proper procedures, the Constitution, checks and balances, etc., would all be out the window as President Obama does what he “knows” is “good for the American people.”  I am not looking forward to it.

President Obama Just Doesn’t Understand How Somebody Could Disagree With Him – Other Than for Mere Politics

A week ago President Obama appeared on the Michael Smerconish radio show.  Mr. Smerconish asked the President what he could do “to win cooperation from Republicans” in his second term.  Here is part of what the President said:

“Well, I think the most important thing is, after the election -- and I believe I'm going to win -- to once again bring the Republicans together with my administration and Democrats and say to them, the election is over; we still have some big problems to solve, and the goal of making me a one-term President is behind us, and the question now is how do we move forward in a way that strengthens middle-class families, make sure that job growth is strong, that wages are going up.”

Wow, he really doesn’t have a clue.  He really thinks that the Republicans’ goal was just about “making [him] a one-term President.”  It wasn’t that they disagreed with him on what might be best for the country.  It was just that they wanted to him to lose. 

And now, since they failed at that, they have to “move forward in a way that strengthens middle-class families”, something they apparently didn’t care about when their goal was just to make him a one-term President.  He doesn’t credit the Republicans with having principles and different ideas for helping the country.  He thinks were just about beating him. 

President Obama doesn’t understand that Republicans, like Eric Cantor and a lot of House Republicans, really don’t agree with his policies and principles.  The President apparently can’t see that the last two years wasn’t mere political obstructionism.  It was that Republicans don’t agree with him on policy.

And he also doesn’t seem to realize that rubbing Republicans’ faces in the fact that he won a second term may not be the best first step to seeking their cooperation.

Bob Woodward’s book showed that President Obama isn’t very good at the kind of negotiation necessary to get legislation through a divided Congress.  The President’s interview with Michael Smerconish shows that President Obama really has no clue on what motivates people who don’t agree with him and how to get an agreement with them.