| Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty September 18, 2013 Democrats Beginning to Realize Obama's Not the Leader They Expected Democrats will never really turn away from President Obama; they're too invested in the narrative of his success. However, it is rather pleasing to see they're starting to see the same guy we've seen since Day One. the New York Times: In recent weeks, disgruntled Democrats, particularly liberals, have bolted from the White House on issues like National Security Agency surveillance policies, a planned military strike on Syria and the potential choice of Lawrence H. Summers to lead the Federal Reserve. In private, they often sound exasperated describing Mr. Obama's operation; in public, they are sometimes only a little more restrained.
| Join Rich Lowry in
DC Tonight |
| | They complain the White House has not consulted enough and failed to assert leadership. They say Mr. Obama has been too passive and ceded momentum to Republicans. Their grievances are sometimes contradictory; some grouse that he takes on causes he cannot win, while others say he does not fight hard enough for principled positions. The failure to enact tightened gun control laws and the Republican hold on immigration legislation have left liberals little to celebrate this year . . . The White House's statistics show that Senate Democrats voted with Mr. Obama more than 90 percent of the time over his first four years, compared with Mr. Clinton, who had support in the 80 percent range over a similar period and President Ronald Reagan, whose party voted with him in the 70 percent range. Ruth Marcus, last seen lamenting my assault on civil discourse: Presidential actions have ripples beyond ripples. Obama may have lucked — or his secretary of state accidentally may have stumbled — into an approach that averted "The Perils of Pauline" moment. But the indecision, the mind-changing, the lurching — and, note, Obama did not dispute such characterizations so much as dismiss them — have consequences. "Style," as the president would have it, matters. Adversaries and allies, foreign and domestic, take a measure of the president's steel. They judge whether he can be trusted, whether he will back down, whether he has what it takes to lead his country and the world. In the past few weeks, I have encountered not a single person outside the White House, Republican or Democrat, who has kind words for Obama's performance. Scornful may not be too strong a word for the consensus view, though it is scorn leavened, at least among the more thoughtful critics, with appreciation for the no-good-options reality of Syria. … Obama's dawdling and eventual capitulation on Larry Summers, his reported first choice for chairman of the Federal Reserve, further reinforce the perception of the president as weak and indecisive. Given the other matters on the presidential agenda, it may not have made sense to launch a fight, this one with his supposed allies, over Summers. But once again, Obama made the situation worse by allowing it to fester for so long, and for the opposition to Summers to build. Hey, only three and a half more years of this guy, right? Why the Modern Gun-Control Debate Is So Insufferable Believe it or not, there are some nice people at NPR. One, after reading yesterday's Jolt, asked for my thoughts on what kind of debates the country should have after a mass-shooting tragedy. I replied: I am rather skeptical of most gun-control proposals. The ones that are pitched in the aftermath of mass shootings are particularly cynical, as they often attempt to regulate circumstances unrelated to the shooting. I still grind my teeth at Mayors Against Illegal Guns running ads in my state citing the Virginia Tech shooting, and talking about the need to shut the "gun show loophole" -- even though the shooter didn't obtain his weapons at a gun show. These sorts of arguments strike me as one part craven opportunism, one part feel-good placebo. (I wanted to say "panacea," but panacea actually means a genuine cure-all.) If someone wants to propose a new restriction on gun ownership after a tragedy, and cites that tragedy as a reason to pass it, it's necessary to show how that new restriction would have prevented, mitigated, or impacted that tragedy. For example, almost none of the gun laws proposed after Newtown would have changed much of anything in that awful shooting, as that disturbed young man stole his mother's legally-purchased guns. I suppose there are two potential changes to the law that would have significantly altered events in Newtown. First, a total ban on private ownership of firearms, which our friends in the gun-control movement keep insisting isn't their goal. Second, a restriction on gun ownership by people who live under the same roof as a person who's deemed mentally incompetent or a threat to himself or others. Of course, then you get into the questions of what constitutes, "mentally incompetent or a threat to himself or others," what constitutes "under the same roof," etc. Then there are the proposals to limit how many rounds each gun can fire before reloading. Almost every spree shooter -- we need a better term for this -- has had more than one firearm when they've launched their attacks. Instituting ten-round limits would mean that future shooters would get off 20 shots before pausing to reload, presuming they only brought two guns. It's reasonable to conclude future mass killers will just bring three or four guns when they begin their rampage. This strikes me as a quite modest mitigation to the danger of these shooters; too modest to seriously consider. The gun-control debate occurs in the context of some very familiar culture-war territory -- "blue America" largely supports gun control, "red America" largely opposes it. The "Acela class," largely living in low-crime areas and working in buildings with private security, because they don't see a need for a gun in their own lives, can't imagine why anyone else could need a gun. (If Mike Bloomberg or Piers Morgan worked the midnight shift at a 7-11, they might be more sympathetic to those who wish to defend themselves with a gun, since they might be more uncertain that police could respond to a life-threatening situation in time.) I find the arrogant, dismissive, "bitterly clinging to guns and religion" tone is rarely far from the surface in these debates. After each shooting, we hear pundits and columnists declare, "it's time for a national conversation on guns." But we actually have had national conversations on guns after each one of these awful events; the conversation usually ends with lawmakers rejecting new restrictions on gun ownership. The pundits and columnists pretend the national conversation hasn't occurred because they keep losing the argument. There isn't much of a culture-war component of discussing mental illness, other than a few folks on the Right who blame the Left for deinstitutionalizing the mentally ill in the 1960s. I suspect that there is no real constituency in favor of the Second Amendment rights of the mentally ill -- provided, of course, the definition of "mentally ill" is clear, explicit, and taken seriously. (If you think there's a stigma to admitting you're seeing a therapist, a psychologist, or getting mental-health treatment now, just wait until some of your legal rights can be restricted because of it.) Thankfully, I've never known anyone who has had violent episodes or a threatening mental illness. My sense of the issue is that people rarely "snap" and become dangerous killers overnight. As you've probably found in your research, there are certain common threads: withdrawal from others and lack of a support network; hostile behavior and lack of temper control, outbursts, etc. It is maddeningly infuriating to hear friends and acquaintances of past shooters describe behavior that seems, in retrospect, to be a warning sign or red flag. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but my sense was that after Columbine, many school administrators tried to institute a new 'if you see something, say something' approach to individuals behaving in a threatening manner. Then we saw in Virginia Tech, that many, many students reported the gunman for strange and threatening behavior, including stalking. School administrators ultimately couldn't do enough to stop him -- I don't know if this stems from fear of lawsuits or overall bureaucratic inertia.) I see Fairfax County has tried a "Mental Health First Aid" program; a friend of mine participated in this program. I'll admit that I don't know how effective a program like this would be; one would hope that people would already know to report strange, troubling, or threatening behavior to authorities. In past writings, I've emphasized that the only authority that can put someone on the federal firearms restriction list is a judge, and so that these sorts of concerns are best sent directly to the cops, not to a school administrator or company HR department. However, a country where more Americans are trained to spot signs of serious, untreated and potentially dangerous mental illness strikes me as a better path than yet another effort to restrict the rights of 40 million gun owners because of the actions of a handful. That's where I'm coming from. Rich & Rand Paul on Foreign Policy; Jonah & Kirsten Powers on Women My NR colleagues are hosting events you may want to check out tonight and tomorrow -- last I heard, there were still some spots available but an RSVP is recommended: 
ADDENDA: Tom Wolfe . . . the only man to appear in both National Review and Marvel Comics? Cracked spotlighted Wolfe's 1970s cameo in The Incredible Hulk and Doctor Strange in a recent article: 
NRO Digest — September 18, 2013 Today on National Review Online . . . Editor's Note:
Get the latest news at www.nationalreview.com | 
Comments
Post a Comment