The View from Right Field

Hunter Biden and Ukraine: Old News – And Still Wrong

There is a big brouhaha about Twitter and Facebook not allowing the re-tweeting or posting (or whatever the proper verb is) of reports in the New York Post about what Hunter Biden allegedly did for the Ukrainian energy company he got a job with when his father was Vice President under Barack Obama.  Apparently, Twitter and Facebook did this because there wasn’t proper sourcing for the reports in the Post, it was based on hacked materials, etc.  (See here and here.)  If Twitter and Facebook really start enforcing a policy requiring stories to be properly sourced, there’s going to be a lot less traffic on those sites.

But back to the Bidens and Ukraine.  If Twitter and Facebook wanted to cut down on posts, etc., about Hunter Biden and Ukraine and his father, a better explanation than a lack of proper sourcing would have been “It’s old news.”  I wrote about this in May of 2014 when reports first came out about Hunter Biden taking the job.  Hunter Biden getting paid by a Ukrainian energy company when his father was Vice President didn’t become wrong because he made an introduction to his father or something else.  It was wrong from the beginning, and it was whether he made the introduction or not.

So, Hunter Biden, Ukraine, Vice President Biden.  Old news.  And still not enough of a reason to vote for Donald Trump.

Do We Have a Dysfunctional Congress – Or a Dysfunctional President?

As the presidential campaign heads into the fall, I assume President Obama will be out campaigning for Hillary Clinton and other Democrats.  And I assume he will spend a lot of time complaining about the “dysfunctional Congress” that he has had to deal with and that has frustrated his efforts.  Except, I am not sure it is only Congress that is dysfunctional.  It might be the President, too.

President Obama likes to say he was elected twice by the American people to deal with our problems.  It is certainly true he was elected twice.  And the first time he was elected, a Democratic Congress was elected, too.  The problem for him was it didn’t last long.

Presidents Shouldn’t Trash Talk

The Denver Broncos visited the White House on Monday, and President Obama, as is his wont, praised a Chicago team, this time talking up the 1985 Chicago Bears’ defense, though adding “[b]ut I’ve got to admit this one [i.e., the Broncos’ defense] was pretty good too.”  I assume the President does this because he thinks it’s cool (or whatever the proper adjective is today) to give a jab to somebody he is supposed to be honoring.  Also, my guess is that basketball is the President’s favorite sport, and trash talking seems to be a big deal in basketball. [See UPDATE below.]

Being a bit of a curmudgeon myself, I am not a fan of trash talking.  I don’t even like it in sports.  It seems to me that it has the potential to motivate the other side to do better (though there are some situations where principle requires booing – see here).

Lois Lerner, the IRS, and Tea Partiers: Nothing to Look At Here, Just Move Along

The Justice Department announced Friday that it would not be bringing charges against Lois Lerner, or anybody else, in the political targeting “scandal” at the Internal Revenue Service.  If you remember, two and a half years ago, Ms. Lerner disclosed (probably because she knew the Internal Revenue Service’s inspector general would be issuing a report soon) that people at the IRS were targeting, or at least giving additional scrutiny to, applications submitted by tea party and other conservative groups.

I put the word “scandal” in quotation marks because, while Republicans think it was a scandal, and President Obama said, at the time, it was “inexcusable” and he was “angry’ about it, Democrats do longer think it was all that big of a deal.  Even though the IRS’s inspector general identified only tea party and other conservative groups as being singled out, Democrats started saying that liberal groups were looked at, too.  Also, it was just a matter of “mismanagement” and “poor judgment,” as the Justice Department said in its letter to Congress yesterday, not a real scandal.¹

The real scandal, Democrats say, was during the Nixon administration, when President Nixon tried to get the IRS to do audits of his political foes.²  Of course, the difference is, back then, the head of the IRS refused to do it, while Lois Lerner, et al, were apparently doing it on their own.  Which is exactly the problem – and the bigger worry. 

Why Are Former Officials Writing These Books About President Obama?

I understand Hillary Clinton’s book.  She’s running for president again (or is it still?).  Robert Gates’ book earlier this year could be viewed as a one-off.  But now Leon Panetta has written a book criticizing much of President Obama’s foreign policy.  Christopher Hill, a career diplomat who was ambassador to Iraq from 2009-2010, has written a book, too.

Why are these people writing these books now?  I understand that there is more money in selling a book while the President is still in office, but do these people really need the money?  I doubt it.  So why didn’t they wait?  Where is their loyalty to the President who appointed them or even to the office of president in general?

Apparently, they don’t feel that much loyalty to Barack Obama.  Presidents usually inspire loyalty, and President Obama has a number of people who are loyal to him.  However, President Obama’s group of loyalists does not seem to include what I would call “independent” people; people who are not dependent on President Obama for their position and influence.  These people had responsible jobs and did important things before they were appointed by President Obama.  And he does not seem to have inspired enough loyalty in them to keep quiet until he is out of office.

However, what about their loyalty to the office of president?  Even if they don’t feel loyalty to the particular president they served, wouldn’t loyalty to the office of president be such that they would postpone this kind of book until the president they are writing about is out of office?

One would think so – unless the mistakes they think were made were, in their opinion, so big that they felt it was important to write about them as soon as possible so that changes could be made.  In other words, maybe it was their loyalty to the office of president that led them to write the books now, as opposed to putting them off.  Maybe they wrote the books now because they thought that getting things right was more important than not embarrassing the current occupant of the office.

Gender Gaps: Where Are They and What Does a Party Do About Them?

Polls are out showing that Democrats’ support among “women” is down.  The recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows it is down from 51% to 47%.*  This is important, according to the article reporting the poll, because Democrats need women’s votes since Democrats do better among women than men (which means, depending on how you look at it, the “gender gap” either favors the Democrats {if you look at the fact more women vote Democratic than the population as a whole} or the  Republicans {if you look at the fact that more men vote Republican than the population as a whole}).

But the real point, which does not seem to be covered by this poll, is not that women vote Democratic.  It’s that single women vote Democratic.  Married women vote Republican.  (See here and here.)  Which is a different point.

But the conclusion, in any case, is not that Republicans (or Democrats, from their point of view) should change their views to get more single women (in the case of Republicans – or married women, in the case of Democrats) to vote for them.  Your principles are your principles (and if they aren’t, I’m not a big fan of yours).  If you believe in your principles, what you can do (actually, all you can do) is to explain why your principles help single women.  I think they do.  It is a matter of explaining your principles better and trusting in the intelligence of the voters.  And accepting that if people don’t believe in your principles, they won’t vote for you.  And further accepting that, if somebody else is willing to “buy” votes by abandoning their principles, that’s the choice they make.
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* The question was: Which party do you prefer to control Congress.  In August, the response among “women” favored Democrats 51% to 37%.  The September result was down to 47% to 40%.

Republicans in Congress: Less Unpopular Than Vladimir Putin – But That’s It

This is to follow up on Sunday’s frustrated post about certain Republicans, both in and out of Congress.  According to a new poll in The Wall Street Journal, of the following five groups/people/institutions: Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, Wall Street, Democrats in Congress and Republicans in Congress, only Vladimir Putin had a worse popularity rating than Republicans in Congress.  Here are the results:

• Vladimir Putin: 4% positive, 68% negative: -64%
• Republicans in Congress: 19% positive, 54% negative: -35%
• Democrats in Congress: 31% positive, 46% negative: -15%
• Wall Street: 21% positive, 33% negative: -12%
• Barack Obama: 40% positive, 47% negative: -7%

I know that Republicans are expecting a big win in November because President Obama is so unpopular and because people are so dissatisfied with the state of the economy, America’s role in the world, etc.  But I’m not sure I see it.  Are you going to vote for somebody with a -35% rating because you don’t like somebody with a -7% rating or a -15% rating?

I agree that Republicans shouldn’t just go along with President Obama when they think he is wrong.  But we can’t just be about “No.”  We need to do something and be for something.  Shutting down the government; not passing your own solutions.  That’s not going to get the job done.  We need to be for something positive.  Paul Ryan is doing that with his proposals on helping the poor.  Dave Camp has been trying to do it on the tax code.  And both of them are doing it in line with Republican principles.  We need more of that, and less of the other stuff we have been seeing. 

2014 Isn’t 1964 and John Boehner Isn’t Nelson Rockefeller

With 2014 being the 50th anniversary of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign, there have been a number of articles about how then-Senator Goldwater lost that election and yet ultimately won the ideological contest with Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980.  The moral, then, is that standing firm may hurt in the short run, but it will win in the long run.  Which is, I suppose, the theory of Senator Ted Cruz, et al, with respect to the immigration crisis on our southern border: Stand up for what you think is right.  Maybe you won’t win now, but “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” and “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue”.  Perhaps that is why Senators Cruz and Sessions (Jeff, R-AL) stirred up enough House Republicans to prevent the House from passing a bill on Thursday and to threaten the possibility that the House wouldn’t pass any bill before it adjourned for five weeks.

With the following result:  Even though President Obama proposed a plan but then wouldn’t negotiate with Republicans about it (negotiation/compromise isn’t something he does well with who disagree with him*) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wouldn’t even bring up a bill up in the Senate, the efforts of Ted Cruz, et al, wound up focusing attention on disarray among House Republicans (who actually did wind up passing a plan, though that wound up being almost an addendum to the main story).  I understand that much of the media is out of sync with Republicans and will criticize them almost no matter what, but we don’t need to make their job easier for them.  Even if the media isn’t great, the media counts.  It’s how a lot of people, especially those in the middle (i.e., those who decide elections) get the news – and their impression of the news.

It was important for the House to pass a bill.  It won’t become law (because the President won’t negotiate and Harry Reid won’t force his members to vote on something that might hurt their chances for re-election), but it would have been great to show people that the Republicans were trying.  Instead, because of the efforts of people like Senator Cruz, it was the House Republicans who looked like fools.

The key point here is that this is about tactics.  It’s not about ultimate philosophy; it’s about how to get there.  A good argument can be made that the Goldwater campaign was an important part of a philosophical change in the Republican Party and America.  But that is not the situation today.  John Boehner has the same general principles as the House Republicans who were fighting him on Thursday.  It’s not about the destination; it’s how to get there – and whether we can convince the American people to go with us.

As the title of this post says, 2014 is not 1964.  John Boehner is not a 2014 version of Lyndon Johnson – or even Nelson Rockefeller.  And Ted Cruz, et al, need to understand they are not Barry Goldwater.
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* At least those in the United States.  He seems to handle negotiation/disagreement with those outside of the United States better than with those at home.

Eric Holder Is Feeling Sorry for Himself Again

In a speech to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network a week, Attorney General Holder said:

“Look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee.  What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?  What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?”

Attorney General Holder obviously thinks he, and President Obama, are being put upon and treated most unfairly.  There are lots of comments one could make, but let me make just one.  If Attorney General Holder really thinks that no other president has been abused and maligned as much as President Obama, I suggest that the Attorney General take a trip to Springfield, Illinois, and go to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.  He should go through the museum there and look at some of things that were said and some of the cartoons that were published about Abraham Lincoln when he ran for president and after he won.  A trip to Springfield might give the Attorney General a little perspective and make him realize things aren’t so bad after all. 

What Is It About Politicians from Wisconsin – And How Can We Get More of Them?

Scott Walker had an Op-Ed in Friday’s Wall Street Journal.  These lines caught my attention:

“When I faced the need to reform collective bargaining in the government, I wanted to win, but I wasn't afraid to lose and didn't worry about getting re-elected.  That was profoundly liberating.

Too many people in politics today spend their time trying not to lose instead of trying to do the right thing.  They would better serve the country by worrying more about the next generation than the next election.”

Governor Walker’s comments reminded me of what Paul Ryan said in an interview with Paul Gigot of The Wall Street Journal in 2011:

“The way I look at things is if you want to be good at this kind of job, you have to be willing to lose it.  Number two, the times require this.  And number three, if you don't believe in your principles, and applying those principles, then what's the point?”

Caring more about doing what is right than getting re-elected.  Wow.  We certainly don’t have much of that in Illinois.  Illinois politicians pass tax hikes after elections, instead of before them.  The next session of the General Assembly is scheduled for the day after the filing deadline for the primary next spring.  After all, our legislators can’t know how to vote on pension reform until they know if they have an opponent in the primary.

Then there is the Speaker of the Illinois House.  He has been speaker for 29 of the last 31 years and the last nineteen years in a row.  But will he pressure his members to vote for real pension reform?  Apparently not.  He seems to be so worried about losing his majority that he won’t ever try to use it to do something good. 

I wish I knew how we could get more elected officials like those Wisconsin politicians who are actually willing to take risks to get something done.  We could use some in Illinois.