Hillary Nomination Would Be an “Obama-Nation”
It is still hard to believe but, if Hillary Clinton’s “confidantes” are to be trusted, Barack Obama is about to appoint her Secretary of State and she is about to accept. This appointment represents the capstone of betrayal of Obama’s promise to be the “change we can believe in.”
Having upended the Democratic Party – largely over his different views on foreign policy & the war in Iraq – he now turns to the leader of the ancient regime he ousted, derided, mocked, and criticized to take over the top international-affairs position in his administration.
No longer, apparently, does he distrust Hillary’s “judgment,” as he did during the debates when he denounced her vote on the Iraq War resolution. Now, all is forgiven. After all, Obama’s election, the only change he apparently truly believed in, is a fait accompli.
Apart from the breathtaking cynicism of the appointment lies the total lack of foreign-policy experience in the new partnership. Neither Clinton nor Obama has spent five minutes conducting any aspect of foreign policy in the past. Neither has ever negotiated anything or dealt with diplomatic issues. It is the blonde leading the blind.
…And then there is the question of whether we want a Secretary of State who is compromised, in advance, by her husband’s dealings with repressive regimes in Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Dubai, the U.A.E., Morocco, and governments about which we know nothing. These foreign leaders have paid the Clinton family millions of dollars directly & through their library and/or foundation – funds that they can & have used as personal income. How do we know that she can conduct foreign policy independently even if it means biting those who have fed her & her husband?
However, the most galling aspect of the appointment is that it puts Obama in the midst of an Administration which, while he appointed it, is not his own. Rather, he has now created a government staffed by Clinton people, headed by Clinton appointees, and dominated by Hillary herself. He has willingly created the same untenable situation as that into which Lyndon Johnson stepped when JFK was assassinated in 1963. Johnson inherited a cabinet wholly staffed by Kennedy intimates with Bobby himself as Attorney General. LBJ had no choice and had to spend two years making the government his own. However, Obama had all the options in the world and chose to fence himself in by appointing Hillary as Secretary of States, Clinton cabinet member Bill Richardson for Commerce, Clinton staffer Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff, (Bill) Clinton buddy (and top lobbyist) Tom Daschle to HHS, and Bill’s Deputy Attorney General, Eric Holder, to Justice.
Presidents Lincoln & Clinton have similarly appointed what Doris Kearns Goodwin has famously called a “team of rivals” to staff their cabinets & administrations. Lincoln named all of his opponents for the Republican presidential nomination to senior posts in his cabinet and Clinton staffed his White House & much of his cabinet with ambassadors to other wings of the Democratic Party. George Stephanopoulos was his ambassador to House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, Harold Ickes his emissary to organized labor, Al Gore his delegate to the environmentalists, Leon Panetta his liaison with Congressional committee chairmen, Ron Brown his man in the black community, and Henry Cisneros as his go-between with the Hispanics.
In each case, the President acted to bolster his ties with the factions of his own party because he feared how he would fare with his party in total control of Congress. Neither the Republicans of 1861 nor the Democrats of 1992 saw the President from their own party as their natural leaders. Lincoln’s colleagues had chosen him only after a deadlock between the two front-runners had paralyzed the convention. Clinton was nominated only after Governor Mario Cuomo of New York, the party’s favorite, had pulled out. Each man was elected with barely 40% of the vote, so each felt constrained to share power with their rivals.
While Obama was not the early favorite of his party, he does not need to defer so ostentatiously to those who fought him for the nomination. His general election mandate clearly entitled him to name whom he pleased. However, he has chosen to nominate men & women with no loyalty to him and no real stake in his future…and, standing above all his appointees, like a president-in-exile, is Hillary Rodham Clinton.
If Obama needed any warning about how Hillary will play the game, he need only look at how she handled her appointment. She forced Obama to see her by publicly complaining that she had not heard from him. When he raised the possibility of her appointment to State, she then leaked word that it was in the works. Even the announcement of her appointment was not made by Obama, but instead leaked by Hillary’s “confidantes.”
Hillary will be a loose cannon as Secretary of State, vindicating her own agenda rather than that of the President and burnishing her own image at every turn. Not since Cordell Hull in the 1930s have we had a Secretary so interested in running for president. Not since William Jennings Bryan in the 1910s have we had a defeated nominee named as Secretary. Obama will not be able to control Hillary nor will he be able to control his own administration with Emanuel as Chief of Staff. He will find that his appointees will march to the beat of their own drummer – if he is lucky – and Hillary’s if he is not.
Either Obama has chosen to put himself in this untenable situation because he is not wise in the ways of Washington or because he plans to be little more than a figurehead. Given his campaign, neither seems likely, but his “promise of change” has proven so bankrupt that maybe the rest of his candidacy is too.
No War on Terror under Obama
Lost in the dramatic disaster unfolding on Wall Street and the brazen hypocrisy of the Hillary Clinton nomination is President-elect Obama’s double signal that the war on terror is now over. His appointment of Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security signals that the Department will once again focus on southern border immigration issues rather than on fighting terrorism.
He could have selected Rudy Giuliani, Louis Free, Ray Kelly, or anyone with real life experience in battling terrorists. Instead, he chose a governor with no knowledge of the subject whose obvious credential is her proximity to the border. The Department of Homeland Security is a polyglot agency that includes immigration enforcement (the old INS) among its many missions. It is also charged with fighting drugs (the old DEA), and battling terrorism. By appointing someone who knows nothing about terrorism, but everything about immigration, Obama has signaled the lack of priority he will give to domestic efforts to keep us safe.
Imagine if President George W. Bush had named the governor of Arizona as his Homeland Security director when the post was created in the aftermath of 9/11! The nation would have howled in protest. However, now that nobody is focused on terrorism (except the terrorists who still want to strike at us), Obama has felt free to bury the task of battling terrorism in the bureaucracy dedicated to policing the Mexican border.
Just as troubling is Obama’s appointment of Eric Holder as his Attorney General. While criticism of the nomination has focused, justifiably, on his sell-out of the public interest by recommending the pardon of fugitive Marc Rich, it is his approval of commutations for the FALN – the Puerto Rican terrorists – that should raise red flags. Before 9/11, when we were not hyper-sensitive to terrorism, Holder did Hillary Clinton’s bidding in approving the pardon of those who bombed Fraunces Tavern in New York City, killing 4 people & injuring 50 others. Facing a run for Senate in New York State, with its sizable Puerto Rican population, Hillary was anxious to deliver a signal of her empathy with the desires of New York’s Hispanics. Bill, eager to please, sought Justice Department approval for the commutations. Even though the prisoners themselves had not asked for commutation (2 refused to accept it), Holder approved the action and cleared the way for a pre-election gift to New York’s Puerto Rican community.
If these two appointments presage Obama’s approach to the war on terror, we are going to be in deep trouble, indeed. There is not a hawk in the bunch.
Add to the mix that this is the first President/Secretary of State combo that has no combined experience in foreign policy since Woodrow Wilson appointed William Jennings Bryan in 1912 and we face real danger. Past presidents with no foreign experience have had the wisdom to appoint secretaries of state with significant experience in international relations. Truman had Byrnes & General Marshall. Johnson had Dean Rusk. Carter had Cyrus Vance. Reagan had Al Haig & George Schultz. Clinton had Warren Christopher & Madeline Albright. Each reached out to supplement his lack of experience, but not Obama. The appointment of Hillary Clinton does nothing to remedy Obama’s inexperience and the appointments of Holder & Napolitano indicate that terrorism in general is a low priority for the upcoming Administration.
The Free Market Consensus 1989-2008: RIP
The subprime mortgage crisis is only the Sarajevo that caused the financial collapse. The real reason is the massive explosion of debt at all levels and in all forms that has engulfed the world. Since 1992, the total of debt in the world has gone from a level equal to the global GDP to a level that is now 3.7 times as much as the global GDP. This debt explosion, explained in Charles Morris’ book The Trillion Dollar Meltdown, consists not only of mortgages, but bonds for corporations that can’t repay them, credit cards for consumers who are neck deep in debt, car loans for drivers who can’t meet the payments, student loans that are swamping young couples, and default insurance sold by companies that can’t make good on their commitments. This massive debt has to be sweated out of our global economic system like a heroin addiction.
However, we will not have to go cold turkey. Governments around the world are committed to mitigating the pain. They are not about to ask us to go through the agony of another Great Depression. They have learned the lessons of the 1930s. Therefore, government will ease our pain with stimulus packages & corporate bailouts to protect us & the companies that sustain our employment base. However, these bailouts & stimuli will not solve the problem! They are simply pain killers – methadone – designed to mitigate our suffering. It is only the private sector shakeout – “creative destruction” in the words of Joseph Shumpeter – that can eradicate the bad debt and bring the economy back to health. To fail to go through this process would put us in the same situation as Japan, which evaded a reckoning with its bad debt crisis and has suffered with twenty years of stagnation as a result. However, to go through withdrawal, even with methadone, will be a long & painful process.
Liberals – demand siders – and conservatives – supply siders – disagree on the remedies for the crisis. The demand siders feel that we need to stimulate demand by passing out checks & cutting middle class taxes. The right points out that this will only be a drop in the ocean of global demand and that much of the money will be used for debt reduction & to buy Chinese products. The supply siders plead for a cut in corporate taxes & capital gains levies. Critics say that the current lack of confidence in the economy inhibits investment no matter how much the tax code incentivizes it. Both solutions & both criticisms are correct. The proper medication – the right methadone – is a balance between the two.
However, conceptually, what is happening is the end of the consensus around free market economics engendered by the fall of communism. The era of free market consensus lasted 1989-2008. It is now over. Bush & Obama will leave us with a legacy of government regulation – at a minimum – and control – at the maximum – over the economy. When the Republican version of the bailout, calling for loans & insurance instead of outright grants of money to corporations, was rejected (thanks to John McCain), the fate of the free market era was sealed. With the bailout cash came the reasonable demand for “equity for the taxpayers” in return. Enter the government. Now, the federal government is the major shareholder in most of our important financial & insurance companies and in many of our manufacturing corporations. Now we hear this advantage articulated in reasonable demands for limits on corporate executive bonuses & compensation. However, it will soon metastasize into calls for a public voice in lending policies and government management & control. Obama & a top-heavy Democratic Congress will accelerate this trend and there is nothing the Republican Party will be able to do about it.
In the meantime, Obama will pass his entire radical agenda by dressing up the expansion of health insurance and his other schemes as part of a “stimulus package.” Thus sanitized, the most massive pork barrel in history will be rubber stamped in a matter of days by the new Democratic Congress.
Obama will be freed from the discipline of the balanced budget. With a bi-partisan consensus that deficits are vital in fighting the crisis (or mitigating the pain), there is no constraint on Obama & his party. The sky is the limit on spending. Indeed, spending is now a national duty.
The inevitable result is massive inflation. Since the deficit spending will have been simply to reduce the pain of the depression and not to cure its cause, it will be a stagflation beyond anything we have ever known. A “depressflation.”
Then, the question will be, “When will we realize that government controls are magnifying – not solving – the problems that caused the depression? When will the patience of the public with Obama’s remedies run out? When will we realize that the inflation the deficits are causing is more painful than the unemployment they are mitigating? Eventually, all this will happen. My guess is 2010, but maybe it will not be until 2012 or later. In the meantime, the era of big government is back!
Political Point
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
craniumlycrafty's journal
Previous
