Compromise: The "Genius" of America

By Mary Claire Kendall

Given the perspective of time, it's crystal clear that to compromise you need a partner who is dealing in good faith. Unfortunately President Obama continues to play games, today trotting out a Rose Garden tax increase, knowing it’s DOA, which actually makes Grover Norquist’s position, referenced herein, seem more reasonable and strategically wise.  As then Governor Ronald Reagan told Johnny Carson in 1975, when asked about how he would balance the federal budget, the same way you protect your virtue – by learning how to say “no.”  But, as Reagan also said, politics is the “art of the possible.”    
                                                                                                                                    
                                       - Mary Claire Kendall, September 19, 2011

Sketch of Bull Run battle by "Mr. Davenport." 

Washington, DC, July 21, 2011 – Echoing loudly, on this, the 150th anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run—the Civil War’s first real battle—is a powerful lesson.

As Shelby Foote reflected in Ken Burns’ The Civil War, this “enormous catastrophe” erupted “because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise.”

“Americans,” he continued in that soothing Mississippi drawl of his, “like to think of themselves as uncompromising. Our true genius is for compromise. Our whole government’s founded on it and it failed.”

Compromise founded our nation; wrote our Constitution; and defused the simmering conflict over slavery’s expansion, between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions, every thirty years since George Washington's first inauguration—in 1790, 1820 and 1850.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30’ north except within the boundaries of Missouri (proposed state). Prior to this agreement, the House of Representatives had steadfastly eschewed compromise. But, then a conference committee was appointed, paving the way to the solution.

Only when North and South factional leaders refused to budge off their ideological positions did their struggle boil over into Civil War.

Some Things Never Change.

Of course, the North had a point—as does Grover Norquist and Republican politicians he holds in check. Slavery was wrong and had to be eliminated. And, taxes to pay for excess spending are wrong, so excess spending must be eliminated. But, then so did the South—as does House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her fellow progressives. While not a perfect analogy, the South was intent on maintaining states’ rights to run their affairs without federal interference. And, entitlements, bankrupting our country, must continue—without reality’s interference—no matter how much they shackle our future.

States’ rights is what motivated General Robert E. Lee, who owned no slaves himself, to accept command of the Confederate Army, instead of President Abraham Lincoln’s offer to command the Union Army. When faced with that decision, siding with Virginia, “my country,” as he called his beloved state, was his only choice.

Of course, it didn’t need to come to that.

And, neither does it today, figuratively-speaking, except for one troubling fact—the same troubling fact that existed in 1865: The political center—where compromise lives—is barely breathing.

As in 1861, today two great factions have commandeered the debate on the national stage and are talking past each other.

Civil War erupted "because we failed to do the thing we really have a genius for, which is compromise."   - Shelby Foote

The Tea Party, claiming a large stake in the Republican Party, given their House of Representative wins in the 2010 elections, insists cuts alone—no new taxes—must close the $2.5 trillion budget gap through roughly November 7, 2012, that, by an amazing coincidence, gets President Barack Obama past the next election.

The Progressives, who hold great sway over the Democratic Party, insist revenue increases, beyond closing loopholes for corporate jets, and cuts to Defense—definitely not entitlements or other favored social programs—solve the problem.

What a mess!

Fortunately, there are signs of compromise, including the “Gang of Six” plan for $4 trillion in cuts paired with revenue increases in a 4:1 ratio, albeit, there’s no way this plan can be “scored” in time; as well as “The McConnell Plan,” linked to doable cuts identified in the Biden talks.

But, will the entrenched factions budge? That's the $2.5 trillion question.

Ironically, like the Tea Partiers of today, Washingtonians who went out to watch the First Battle of Bull Run on a Sunday afternoon 150 years ago, in Manassas, near the muddy “Bull Run” stream, 30 miles south of Washington, thought it would be great fun. A regular tea party!

They brought their picnic baskets to watch the battle, thinking the Army of the Potomac would whip 'em, thus settling once and for all the decades-old conflict, making the federal government’s role in arbitrating slavery's future pre-eminent.  Instead they witnessed in horror as casualties mounted during the five-hour battle in which General Irvin McDowell’s 28,000-strong Army of the Potomac fought General Pierre Gustave Toutant (PGT) Beauregard's 33,000-strong Confederate States Army.

When all was said and done, 2,900 Northerners and 2,000 Southerners, respectively, were killed, wounded, captured, or missing. Hardly a tea party!

Thus, as we mark today’s anniversary, best to heed warnings regarding the August 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling, which if disregarded, could result in the largest, fastest tax increase in American history, through steep interest rate hikes.

At which point, Grover, I would watch out for flying pies.


Published for the first time on American Politics and Policy, Wednesday, September 19, 2011.

Originally published in AND Magazine.

"Where Are The Jobs?"

By Mary Claire Kendall

Unemployed men queued outside a Depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago
by Al Capone, in an effort to clean up his public image.  The storefront sign
 reads: "Free Soup, Coffee and Doughnuts for the Unemployed."   
February 1931. 306-NT-165.319c. (american_cities_129.jpg) 
Credit: Unknown. Source: American Archives.

This column, originally published on July 16, is as relevant as ever.  The situation continues to deteriorate, with "zero" jobs reported in August, a number not seen since 1945; while Obama is still talking about infrastructure projects and job-creation tax credits as the road to recovery. Now packaged as "The American Jobs Act,"  he announced it to great fanfare at a Joint Session of Congress on September 8. Unfortunately, as employers, Americans at large, Republicans and even Democrats, are signaling, his vague plan, costing $447 billion - paid for by small-business-choking tax hikes - fails to revive the private sector's job creating engine. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has a detailed plan, released September 6, which focuses squarely on the private sector's central role in creating jobs. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), likewise, spoke to Obama's government-as-prime-mover myopia in remarks to the Economic Club of Washington today. "The president's proposals," he said, "are a poor substitute for the pro-growth policies that are needed to remove barriers to job creation in America."  

Washington, DC, July 16, 2011—“Where are the jobs?,” House Speaker John Boehner tweeted in the recent “twitter town hall” hosted by President Barack Obama.

It's a fair question.

Two days later, the government reported the unemployment rate edged up to 9.2% in June, from 9.1%, while “real unemployment” was 16.2%. Just 18,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy—far less than expected, dashing hopes of a fast rebound.

As George Will recently wrote, “Is this the best we can do?”

Obama, in typical fashion, answered Boehner by blaming Republicans—this time for not supporting big “infrastructure and public works programs” to create jobs, the need for which he reiterated in Rose Garden remarks following the dismal jobs report.

Of course, no one argues against the need for repair and construction of roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, sewers, etc.

But, clearly we can do better at reversing the downward trajectory in which over 40 million Americans don’t have a job (14.1 million) or sufficient employment (over 26 million), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—as housing gets weaker, Case Shiller Index recently confirming a double dip in prices.

Long line snaking around building for jobs fair in Atlanta in August 2011.
Credit: Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal & Constitution, via Associated Press.

The first order of business would be to realize that, in Calvin Coolidge’s famous words, “The business of America is business.”

Or, to put it in modern parlance, “It's the private sector, stupid!”

But, the overriding fact is Obama believes government, not the private sector, should be the main jobs engine and solution to the interlocking housing crisis. This, in spite of the fact that the private sector is generating what growth there is. The payroll processing firm ADP reported that 157,000 jobs were created in the private sector in June—still a long way to go before closing the yawning 40,000,000 jobs gap.

Admittedly, some of Obama’s rhetoric is starting to give the nod to the private sector:

“Government,” he said in last weekend’s radio address, “has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can't afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.”

Unfortunately for him and the rest of the country, it’s a little late; besides which, such rhetoric turns off his liberal base.

It’s an unenviable position to be in.

As Karl Rove summed it up in “Why Obama Is Likely to Lose in 2012”: “…he faces four serious threats. The economy is very weak and unlikely to experience a robust recovery by Election Day. Key voter groups have soured on him. He's defending unpopular policies. And he's made bad strategic decisions.”

A line outside the State Temporary Relief Administration in New York City
 on November 24, 1933.  Credit: Associated Press.
During the Great Depression, national unemployment rate reached 25 percent, 
13 million people were unemployed and 100,000 businesses failed.  
Now the effective unemployment rate is approaching 20% 
and some 40 million have insufficient or no employment.

Like Herbert Hoover, heedless of the Great Depression’s economic reality, Obama, until recently, was telling Americans prosperity is just around the corner; albeit now he’s signaling we've got a long way to go before we turn that corner. Indeed we do. As Martin Feldstein, Harvard Economics Professor, Chairman of President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers and former President of National Bureau for Economic Research, recently wrote, the economy’s near-term outlook is “weak at best.” Yet, “fundamental policy changes will probably have to wait until after the presidential and congressional elections in November 2012.”

Ironically, Hoover could not see his way clearly to supporting direct cash assistance to starving, jobless Americans, when there was none; whereas, Obama cannot see his way clearly to unleashing definitively private sector job-creating energies, when there's an abundance—even though it would stimulate a tax revenue gusher to melt the debt and fund his cherished infrastructure projects.

One of the only small businesses in America
not burdened by the heavy hand of Washington regulation, 
albeit  Montgomery County, MD could be more biz-friendly.

Hoover was resoundingly defeated in 1932—one of 10 incumbents, out of 31, who have lost re-election since our nation's founding.

Obama is on track to become #11.

His only hope, it seems—absent a miracle—is that Republicans, like Democrats in 2008, will nominate someone who is charismatic and inexperienced. Unfortunately for him, however, the Obama “experiment,” as Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney calls it, has inoculated even Republican primary voters against that possibility, as a recent Iowa poll demonstrated.

Voters clearly want out of this Great Recession.

"The line of 4,000 hopefuls stretched from a fifth-floor hotel ballroom
 to the cold street below, snaking around the block."
 New York Daily News,  March 6, 2009, Credit: Watts/News.
 How many of these folks are still unemployed or underemployed,  
or, discouraged,  have simply dropped out of the labor market, their  
99 week unemployment benefits  having long ago run out?

"The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for unemployment 
benefits earlier this month jumped to a 26-year high.  And by the looks 
of these lines at job fairs  across the country, who knows when it will  get better."   
 New York Daily News,  March 6, 2009,  Credits: Sullivan/Getty.  
Of course, as we now know from the perspective of almost three years
 under Obama's leadership,  it's not gotten better, it's gotten worse - much worse.

Published for the first time on American Politics and Policy, Wednesday, September 15, 2011.

Hooverville, 1932.  Credit: Unknown.

Originally published in AND Magazine, 7/16/11.

Winning the Present with TR and Civility

 by Mary Claire Kendall

It might seem like an odd pairing, but what the GOP field needs is TR and civility to win the present — and defeat President Barack Obama in 2012.

TR, of course, refers to larger-than-life Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who served as president from 1901-1908, then ran on the Progressive Bull Moose ticket in 1912.

While he was a rock-ribbed Republican, when theory ran afoul of doing what’s right by the little guy, he always chose the latter.

His brand of politics is perfect for slaying today’s dragons that have gutted the middle class and precipitated runaway spending.

Take, for example, housing prices. The Case-Shiller index recently revealed they’ve declined more steeply than during the Great Depression. The fact that 75% of consumers can’t even get loans to purchase a home, let alone refinance, is a big reason why.

Investment banker Christopher Whalen, whose father served in Ronald Reagan’s “kitchen cabinet,” says the way around this problem is to raise the FHA loan cap and help small and medium size banks increase lending. This would mean giving more power and money to community banks. Obama prefers letting Wall Street call the shots — in spite of its role in precipitating the 2007-08 housing meltdown — while the little guy gets slammed.

But, Republicans, Whalen says, should out-progressive Democrats and do what is right, which is TR writ large. TR basically stared down Wall Street, thus saving it from itself; so should today’s Republicans.

One hundred years after TR’s Bull Moose gambit, many in the GOP field seem well-positioned to take up his mantle.

For instance, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty emphasizes Main Street production over Wall Street consumption. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has that “can do” spirit. And Texas Governor Rick Perry shares TR’s tough-as-nails persona.

Then there’s Mitt Romney, who, like TR, favors universal health care as the key to economic stability, signing it into law as governor of Massachusetts (2003-2007).

Many conservatives deride the 2006 Massachusetts law as ObamaCare’s twin and Tea Party poison — a comparison Obama smugly reinforces. But, in fact, ObamaCare and RomneyCare are apples and oranges. Whereas ObamaCare reduces what doctors are paid; RomneyCare ensures that doctors are, in fact, paid when a patient, who could otherwise afford it, lacks insurance.

Also, as Romney underscored in Monday’s CNN debate in Manchester, RomneyCare did not raise taxes, whereas ObamaCare does — to the tune of $500 billion — in addition to shifting $500 billion out of Medicare to fund it.

Sixty-three percent of Massachusetts residents favor the law, according to a recent poll by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Boston Globe, up 10 percentage points in the past two years, with only 21 percent opposed.

And what of the “individual mandate” that makes people think RomneyCare is ObamaCare? Well, considering there’s already a federal mandate to provide ER care to anyone regardless of ability to pay, it’s pretty important to make sure docs get paid, unless you want to drive them out of business a la ObamaCare.

Where it gets tricky is that an insurance mandate only make sense if, as in the case of automobiles, having coverage doesn’t encourage crashes, whereas standard health insurance increases utilization. Also, RomneyCare does not encourage medical savings accounts and streamlined, just-the-basics insurance.

But, as Romney is at pains to say, the Massachusetts law was a state solution to a state problem. He vows to rescind cost-prohibitive, one-size-fits-all ObamaCare if elected president — granting a waiver to all 50 states on Day One.

Meanwhile, Republicans have come up with a way to obviate a “mandate” — since understandably, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea — by assessing a fee on those who don’t buy insurance to hedge against costs incurred should they fall ill or suffer injury.

But, sensing political opportunity, Romney’s Republican opponents have been pouncing on him, with Sarah Palin tut tutting the Massachusetts law in Boston one hour before Romney announced for the presidency. Gov. Pawlenty called out “ObamneyCare” because, he explained in the debate, Obama claimed RomneyCare was his “blueprint.”

The good news, though, is Monday’s debate [5] signaled a truce of sorts.

Indeed, if Republicans hope to win the present, we must nominate a candidate who understands what ails the economy and how to cure it, of which health care is a big part. This means civility — honestly assessing opponents’ positions and presenting your own — will be critically important, lest we destroy ourselves from within.

So, with eyes on the prize, let the race be guided by the kind of civility our great Republican presidents, such as Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and, yes, even TR, practiced; and inspired by TR’s overflowing common sense in making life better for the little guy, now suffering under the weight of Obamanomics.

Originally published in Pajamas Media http://pajamasmedia.com/ on June 15, 2010

________________________________________

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/winning-the-present-with-tr-and-civility/

URLs in this post:

[1] Theodore Roosevelt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt

[2] chose the latter: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/175141/teddy-right/jonah-goldberg

[3] The Case-Shiller index: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-09/shiller-says-u-s-home-price-declines-of-10-to-25-wouldn-t-surprise-me-.html

[4] Christopher Whalen: http://blogs.reuters.com/christopher-whalen/

[5] Monday’s debate: http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/14/who-was-the-nights-biggest-winner/

Copyright © 2011 Pajamas Media. All rights reserved.

Haley Barbour: 2012 GOP Dark Horse?

by Mary Claire Kendall

Politics is an art—the “art of the possible,” in President Ronald Reagan’s formulation.

Emerging from the crop of Republican presidential candidates is Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who knows the art of politics as well as his good friend, the late Lee Atwater, a politically-gifted South Carolina boy, who like Barbour, rose to the Chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. The Party thrived under both.

Lee Atwater with President Ronald Reagan during the 1984 presidential campaign

Lee died 20 years ago this spring (i.e., March 29). He would have been 60 this year. Barbour is 63.

On a personal note, I first met Haley at the opening reception for Ed Rollins’ lobbying firm. Lee was there, too. Ed had just run Reagan’s landslide re-election, with Lee serving as his deputy. I remember Ed quipping to a reporter that the key to a winning campaign is finding a winning horse.

Haley is a winning horse.

He’s the Republican Party's Bill Clinton, without the fatal flaw: a Southern governor, who's a die-hard policy wonk, who knows and loves the game of politics better than anyone in the room—who also happens to be a schmoozer extraordinaire with dollops of Southern charm who genuinely likes people. 

And, like Clinton, he's a baby boomer, born in the wake of the Allied World War II epic victory, who lost his father at a tender age.

Admittedly, he’s also a “dark horse,” registering little more than an asterisk in recent polls of Republican presidential primary voters.  As the New York Times reported recently vis-à-vis their poll with CBS, "Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi may be well known along K Street — where he was once a lobbyist — and among Washington-based reporters who covered him when he was the Republican Party chairman. But 85 percent of Republican voters said they did not know enough about him to offer an opinion."

But, he is well known and liked in the most important state for a Republican presidential nominee in sealing the deal—South Carolina, where he handily won the recent poll in Charleston County.

At or near the head of the pack—nationally—is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who makes a persuasive case for why he’s the one to lead America out of the wilderness.  And, he's neck and neck with Obama in the latest McClatchey-Marist poll.  The others cut fine figures, too, including former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. And, of course, Donald Trump is surging with his winsome, no-nonsense, tough-talk New York style.

But, Barbour is, arguably, the savviest politically—and, critically important, has the best sense of humor—making him odds-on-favorite. 

Now, many sniff at Barbour’s Mississippi roots, other struggling states tut-tutting, “Thank God for Mississippi!” It’s not a compliment. But, another way to look at it is, if you can make it in the Magnolia State, you can make it anywhere. Governor Barbour has certainly made it—outfoxing trial lawyers on tort reform, enticing corporations to relocate to Mississippi, balancing the budget and, most recently, leading the nationwide war on state-budget-busting Medicaid.

Barbour speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)

in Washington on Saturday, Feb. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Then there's that cockamamie idea that to be from the South, is to be a racist rube.  Surely, after electing the first African-American president, it’s time we broke through another barrier and elected the first Deep South Republican President. What better time than the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War. Then, let him prove how much he can do to raise the living standard of African-Americans—and every other race and culture that bears the name “American”—thus dispelling the In the Heat of the Night racial stereotype—reverse discrimination—once and for all.

Furthermore, some in the Republican Party were decrying one of Barbour’s opening forays into Iowa Republican presidential politics on the Ides of March, no less, for suggesting Republicans might look for budget cuts in the Defense Department and scale back in Afghanistan.

But, Barbour looked prescient for three reasons—particularly in light of President Barack Obama’s offensive against Libya three days later:

First, he ticked off the neoconservatives. And, for their outsized role in the Republican Party, not always producing outsized success (e.g., Iraq “we will be greeted as liberators” War), that might be a good thing.

Governor Haley Barbour, appearing on CNN, November 2, 2010

But then, it wasn’t unexpected. Bill Kristol, son of the late Irving Kristol, “father of neoconservatism,” and Weekly Standard editor, had been throwing stink bombs at Barbour. (As a matter of fact, neocons have been throwing stink bombs at Southern conservatives since the M.E. Bradford dustup.)

A late December Weekly Standard cover story racially stereotyped Barbour. Then, in a blog entry, “T-Paw v. Hee-Haw,” Kristol praised Pawlenty, i.e., “T-Paw,” for promoting neocon foreign policy, while lambasting Barbour, whom he dubbed “Hee-Haw,” for advocating, at a GOP dinner in Iowa, the aforementioned defense cuts and troop reductions in Afghanistan and deriding him because he “couldn’t identify” specific cuts. After skewering Barbour more, Kristol reasoned he smelled a “shrewd political operative,” who sees “an opening for a defense-cutting, Afghanistan-skeptic candidate in 2012.” Haley Barbour’s son, Sterling, smelled something else and sent Kristol an e-mail in which, according to Houston Chronicle, he “suggest(ed) Kristol, a conservative leader who served as an informal adviser to 2008 vice presidential pick Sarah Palin, is more interested in dividing the party than defeating President Barack Obama in 2012.”

Meanwhile, Kristol showered lavish praise on Obama for his Libya intervention, declaring in his blog after Obama’s speech on the offensive, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Et tu, Bill Kristol?

Governor Haley Barbour, 2011, LifeNews.com

Second, on that Ides of March, Barbour simultaneously signaled to another group of Reagan Democrats, especially the Southern variety, whose sons and daughters do most of the fighting and dying in these too-often misguided Mideast ventures, who are mad as hell, they’re not going to take it anymore, that he feels their pain. Dave “Mudcat” Sanders, who watches white Appalachian voters, told The Daily Caller’s Neil Munroe vis-à-vis Obama’s Libyan intervention: “I don’t see any upside, I don’t see him gaining him any voters… (they’re) tired of body-bags coming back to the mountains…”

Third, he telegraphed he’s not afraid to ask a Republican sacred, ahem, elephant—namely the not-so-lean-and-mean portion of defense spending—to step up to the plate and do its part. After all, since gaping debt and deficits, according to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, now constitute a veritable national security threat, it’s only right.

Barbour was similarly prescient in Iowa at the late March Principles Forum, citing economic growth and job creation “for our people” as priority one—spending cuts being “the means to an end”—noting “my old friend Fred Smith, my fellow Mississippian,” FedEx CEO/founder’s “great saying”: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing,” underscoring Barbour’s other “main thing”—electing a new president in 2012.

Lee Atwater 'jams' with President Bush at the

Celebration for Young Americans Inaugural event.

Inscription on photo is to "Robb Austin."

Welcome to the 2012 Republican presidential race, where the ghost of Lee Atwater won’t be far behind.

As former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Bush-Quayle ’88 Chairman, said in his moving eulogy at Lee’s funeral twenty years ago on April 4, 1991, when it came to the game of politics, Lee was “Machiavellian… in the very best sense of that term.”

Lee knew how to win.

So does Haley.

The author with Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defense Secretary during the Iraq War,

at a reception for former First Lady Nancy Reagan, June 2, 2009,

 the day the bust of President Reagan was unveiled in the Capitol Rotunda 

Postscript

So many memories about Lee have flooded my heart as I wrote this piece.

In August 1985, I interviewed with Lee after he had been jogging in the hot summer heat. He slouched back in his chair with his knees leaning against the desk, as I, dressed prim and proper, did my best to answer his questions. What a character!

I got a job instead at Ed Rollins’ firm, Russo, Watts & Rollins, right up the street from Lee’s firm in Old Town Alexandria. (Watts had produced the famous “Morning in America” ads for Reagan-Bush ’84 ).

Lee was always so gracious and encouraging to me when he would call to talk with Ed. Of course, they were great competitors: Lee would schedule these early morning breakfasts at 7:30 a.m., leaving Ed pleading to meet at 8 a.m.; but 7:30 a.m. it was!

Then, I remember that day in February 1990, when I was watching Lee being interviewed on TV with his cousin Steve Page, a fellow political appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services.  In the course of the interview, Lee gave out his jogging route—a security breach, which shocked Steve, given what a target Lee was.

A month later, it became clear why Lee had been so careless. That day Steve and I went to a White House arrival ceremony for some dignitary, I can’t remember which one. All I could remember was how shaken Steve was because Lee had had a seizure the day before while speaking at a fundraising breakfast for Senator Phil Graham (R-TX). He was soon diagnosed with a brain tumor.

I started getting together with Steve to listen to tapes on alternative therapies that he thought might help Lee. In April 1990, after a few of those sessions, when it became clear Lee’s condition was much worse than first contemplated, I told Steve I would pray for him through the intercession of this holy priest, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, being featured in Roland Joffe’s soon-to-be released film, There Be Dragons. I told him Escriva was on the way to being canonized, explaining that asking him to intervene with God was like asking Lee to intervene with the President. I prayed novena after novena, 27 in all; then in December I got really sick with the flu, and slacked off. On May 6, 1991, totally exhausted, I stayed home and read the papers, cover to cover, and, lo and behold, that day there was the story of Lee’s conversion in December 1990. 

In the waning days of Lee's life, he apologized to Michael Dukakis for saying of him he would “strip the bark off the little bastard.” It was a gracious gesture and, I think, was Lee’s way of saying, ‘The ’88 campaign was an extremely rough fight and I’m sorry.’

Of course, Lee always knew his best campaign tactic was Dukakis himself; Dukakis’ ride in that M1 Abrams tank, where, Lee observed, he looked like Bullwinkle, was a classic.  That day on the campaign, the sense that the tide had turned, as, indeed, it had, was palpable.

God bless Lee Atwater.


Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based journalist and screenwriter. She's published frequently in the Washington Times, Washington Examiner, San Francisco Examiner, and Pajamas Media, among other national venues.  A graduate of Wellesley College, she has extensive political experience including a stint as one of Lee Atwater’s “30 nerds” on the George H.W. Bush presidential campaign. She served as a Reagan political appointee at the U.S. Department of Education, 1987-’88; and as a George H.W. Bush political appointee at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1989-’93. For more information, see www.maryclairecinema.com.


First day article published, April 6, 2011... On this day in history: April 6 ... during the American Revolution,  Congress opened all U.S. ports to international trade, 1776... during the Old West era, The Black Hawk War began, 1832... during The Civil War, The Battle of Shiloh, 1862, and The Battle of Sayler's Creek, 1865, began... The U.S. entered World War I, 1917... Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece, during World War II, 1941... U.S. ground combat troops began to take offensive measures in Vietnam, 1965... U.S. forces responded to North Vietnamese offensive, 1972... Also, the Mormon Church was established, 1830... Tyler was inaugurated as the 10th president, 1841... Peary's expedition reached The North Pole, 1909... Oscar Wilde was arrested, 1895... .the First modern Olympics were held, 1896... and 2001: A Space Odyssey was released, 1968.... and, the Declaration of Arbroath was signed in  Scotland in 1320, and Tartan Day, a celebration of Scottish heritage, is observed.

June 21, 2011 update:  Former Utah Governor and U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman gave a moving presidential announcement speech today with the Statue of Liberty in the background - 30 years after Ronald Reagan announced for the presidency in the very same spot.  Daily Beast's John Avlon is concluding Huntsman is this year's GOP dark horse... time will tell... 

April 25, 2011 update: Governor Haley Barbour issued a statement today announcing that he has decided not to run for president after all because he did not feel he had the requisite "fire in the belly" to endure the steep climb a presidential run entails.  He made the right decision: It takes a lot of fire in the belly to climb that presidential mountain, especially given the state of the Republican party today, and the corresponding Herculean task of unifying it around a singular purpose.  But, of course, Barbour will still serve as a party elder and power broker, helping the GOP win the White House, plus more seats in House and possibly the Senate in November 2012... that's the spirit, as of today, in which this article is published...

**********

Obama's Faith-Building Exercise: Energy and the Middle East

by Mary Claire Kendall

President Barack Obama in front of the "The Great Sphinx of Giza"

during his visit to Cairo in June 2009   (Mandel Ngan / AFP-Getty Images)

“Let me tell you, these past two years, they have deepened my faith,” President Barack Obama intoned at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year.

Let me tell you, President Obama, these past two years, they have deepened everyone’s faith!

The latest faith-building exercise is the President’s management of revolution in the Middle East, where strategically important energy supplies hang in the balance, while he’s simultaneously curbing American oil and gas production.

It’s surreal.

Just before that Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire, thereby inflaming the region with revolutionary fervor, Obama, on December 1, rescinded his March 2010 decision to expand offshore oil exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast—a moratorium expected to last at least seven years. All told, these regions have reserves equivalent to Norway (7.5 billion barrels of oil), and Canada (58.5 trillion cubic feet of gas); and the expansion, partially opening those waters, would have yielded enough oil to fuel more than 2.4 million cars and heat 8 million households for 60 years.

In spite of a Louisiana federal judge holding the Obama administration in contempt over the moratorium ,  Republican Senator David Vitter (R-LA) recently called out Obama appointees Ken Salazar and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director Michael Bromwich, for claiming many more pending offshore drilling permits than is actually the case.

Under pressure, Bromwich, the top U.S. offshore-drilling regulator, said Tuesday, more permits would be issued “within the next week,” not months, while publicly excoriating the industry for what he considers its devil-could-care attitude in the wake of last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Bromwich told reporters, “I don’t know what the pace will be going forward. I don’t think anyone is in a position to say what that will be.”

But, Obama’s energy sleight-of-hand is a tea party compared to his management of revolution in the Middle East.

He was, of course, a little late to that party that, Sphinx-like, now involves solving a riddle—how to maintain stability in the midst of tectonic change—or be gobbled up.

Obama didn’t even mention the nascent Egyptian uprising in his State of the Union and failed to publicly encourage democracy in Egypt until crisis hit, leaving many scratching their heads given Egypt’s critically important role in Middle East stability.

With revolution spreading like wild fire throughout the region, prevention in Egypt—urging now-deposed President Hosni Mubarak, as President George W. Bush did, to prune dead branches of government repression and end incendiary injustice—should have been job one.

But, it was only when the fire was fully ablaze that Obama engaged—in spite of remaining neutral during the historic Iranian “Green Revolution” in June 2009. Nine days earlier, speaking at Cairo University, on the eve of the Iranian elections then shaping up as a sham, Obama highlighted US intervention in the 1953 Iranian coup, intimating that it catalyzed the 1979 radical theocratic takeover.  When protests erupted over the patently unfair Iranian elections, Obama remained neutral in spite of the fact that our interests and values perfectly aligned in that instance.

As Niall Ferguson wrote in Newsweek, “Wanted: A Grand Strategy,” “The wave Obama just missed—again—is the revolutionary wave of Middle Eastern democracy.”

A faith-building exercise, indeed.

“It’s hard as hell,” wrote Leslie Gelb in The Daily Beast, to transform protests into democracy, and easy for the process to be hijacked by opportunists less interested in freedom for the people than power for themselves.

Far better—as Leslie “Remember that great old democrat, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin?” Gelb wrote—to go it slow.

With all the danger now mixed with uncertainty, the Middle East needs all the prayers it can get.

Smart leadership—“`progressive pragmatism,’ with an emphasis on both words” as David Ignatius counsels—wouldn’t hurt either.

Of course, the Libyan invention doesn’t come close to passing the “dumb war” test Obama used in 2002 to oppose the Iraq intervention against brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, who makes Qaddafi look tame by comparison.  Our strategic national interest is non-existent: Libya has far less oil reserves, supplying 2% of the world’s oil, and does not have the ability to threaten shipping lanes like Iran.

Rather, a smart model is that employed by President Ronald Reagan when bombing Libya 25 years almost to the day that Operation Odyssey Dawn began—consulting Congress and outlining the mission clearly for the American people from the Oval Office—not Rio.

Absent smart policy that follows protocol, prayer will have to do for now, as Gelb urges at the end of this piece analyzing Obama’s misguided Libyan intervention.

Then, again, there’s always the Constitution, as then Senator Joe Biden articulated on “Hardball” in 2007, vis-à-vis Iran’s belligerence, noting President George W. Bush lacked “constitutional authority” to go to war “unless we were attacked or unless there is proof we are about to be attacked.”

Originally published in Pajamas Media in March 2011.