| Dear Reader (as well as newcomers who were accidentally referred to this "news"letter by some bad code over at Healthcare.gov), Last week on the Special Report online show -- where things get a little wackier than the broadcast version -- I trotted out my joke that the White House had outsourced Healthcare.gov to the finest programmers in the Amish community. Charles Krauthammer, with his usual arch sarcasm, said something like, "I for one would like to disassociate myself from this needless attack on the Amish community." I replied, "Who cares, it's not like they're watching." Well, I've decided Charles was right. Because here's the thing: When the Amish make something, it works. The Sacrificial Herd I watched the first hour or two of the hearings yesterday. What I think a lot of people missed is that this was the Beltway version of Broadway auditions for Rent. But instead of seeking a part in a treacly gay socialist musical, each witness was auditioning for the role of administration scapegoat. Or, to be more accurate, each was auditioning for the role of least acceptable administration scapegoat (LADS). (By the way, technically, I didn't need that acronym there as I don't use the term again, I just thought it looked cool and kind of fit with the barb at Rent.) When I go to Alaska to visit the Fair Jessica's people, I'll often hear some version of a joke about grizzly bears. The gist is, if a bear is chasing you, you don't need to be faster than the bear, you need to be faster than the guy you're hiking with. A similar dynamic applies in scandals of this nature: You don't have to be blameless, you just need to be harder to blame than the other guy. That's because the media tends to stalk its prey like the unthinking zombie horde it so often is. Twenty miscreants, malefactors, and scalawags could be in on some scheme to defraud or bilk the public fisc, and the zombie horde will start chasing all of them, but the zombies will stop to feed on the first poor soul who can't keep up. Now Bill Clinton always understood this. Whenever it was necessary, he'd reassure his co-conspirators and enablers that he had their back, right up until the minute he found it necessary to handcuff them to the rear fender of a broken down Ford Pinto. Sometimes he varied his techniques, of course. Here's a reenactment of how Bill Clinton treated Webb Hubbell. But you could always count on Bill to climb to safety over the backs of those who trusted him most. Barack Obama, who holds a patent on a device that hurls aides and friends under a bus from great distances, also understands this. That is why Kathleen Sebelius these days looks a lot like a Soviet general on his way to brief Stalin on the early "progress" in the battle of Stalingrad. Anyway, yesterday's hearings were just the early try-outs. There are 55 contractors and countless nameless bureaucrats who can be thrown into the Great Pit of Carkoon ("You're just determined to keep mixing metaphors aren't you?" -- The Couch) and given the full scope of this fustercluck, they could all be made to walk the plank before this is over. Dictators and Liberal Standards It's not uncommon for some on the right to sniff dictatorial tendencies in Obama (just as many on the left thought Bush was going to be an American Caesar). And to be sure, there's a decidedly anti-democratic strain in Obama's thinking. He has a certain contempt for democratic norms and the need to engage his political opponents in good faith. He is deeply enamored with the liberal cult of technocratic infallibility (this was one of the main reasons he was so blasé about the implementation of Obamacare; of course the propeller heads will solve it, we're geniuses). Like Tom Friedman, he believes the greatest impediment to social progress is the Neanderthalian refusal of certain Americans to accept that the experts know exactly what to do and how to do it. He openly fantasizes about imposing military obedience on the American people. And as the author of Liberal Fascism, I think I'm more apt than most to recognize the rough iron underneath the warm and fuzzy exterior of liberalism. But as I've written many times, I don't think we have much reason to fear traditional jack-booted dictators in this country. Ironically, the main reason we don't have to worry about them is that we worry about them so much. An obsessive-compulsive hypochondriac who washes his hands 30 times a day probably doesn't have to worry about getting syphilis, but the greatest guarantee that he won't is his own paranoia about getting it. Deep in American DNA is a visceral aversion to despotism. Sometimes, during a war or other crisis, it can be suspended for a while, but eventually we remember that we just don't like dictators. The bad news is that we don't feel that way -- anymore -- about softer, more diffuse and bureaucratic forms of tyranny. Every American is taught from grade school up that they should fear living in the world of Orwell's 1984. Few Americans can tell you why we shouldn't live in Huxley's Brave New World. We've got the dogmatic muscle and rhetorical sinew to repel militarism, but we're intellectually flabby when it comes to rejecting statist maternalism. We hate hearing "Because I said so!" But we're increasingly powerless against, "It's for your own good!" (Sadly, the surest route to the 1984-ification of America is to embrace Brave New Worldism. Once you've created a society of men without chests -- in C. S. Lewis's phrase -- you've created a society ripe for a father-figure to make all of the decisions). For instance, when the national-security types intrude on our privacy or civil liberties, even theoretically, all of the "responsible" voices in the media and academia wig out. But when Obamacare poses a vastly more intrusive and real threat to our privacy, the same people yawn and roll their eyes at anyone who complains. If the District of Columbia justified its omnipresent traffic cameras as an attempt to keep tabs on dissidents, they'd be torn down in a heartbeat by mobs of civil libertarians. But when justified on the grounds of public safety (or revenue for social services or as a way to make driving cars more difficult), well, that's different. And it is different. Motives matter. But at the same time, I do wish we looked a bit more like the America Edmund Burke once described: In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; [In America] they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze. King Obama Charlie Cooke has a great column today making a very similar point to what I had intended to start the G-File with: Obama's not a dictator; he's a king. And when I say he's a king, I don't mean the dictatorial kind of an absolute monarchy. I mean he's like the king in a parliamentary democracy where the prime minister has all of the power and the monarch is supposed to mug for postcards and inspire elementary-school children. He's less Longshanks and more King Ralph. At least whenever he's expected to take responsibility, he becomes a figurehead who gives voice to the public's outrage over the problems he himself created. "Nobody is angrier," Obama routinely insists, about the crap people should be angry at him about. As Charlie puts it, "Obama is less Julius Caesar than he is a tribune of the plebs -- an Oprahfied avatar that has been custom-designed both to indulge and guide the public sentiment like so many Bill Clintons feeling your pain." He's always changing costumes to play the role that political necessity requires of him, which means he has more wardrobe changes than a Vegas drag queen's one-"woman" tribute to Cher. Always Running for a Job He Already Has The only thing Barack Obama knows how to do is be Barack Obama. He thinks that's his job, like a king whose only real responsibility is to be kingly. The problem is that the one person (who matters, at least) who doesn't understand this is Barack Obama. As he once said, Obama believes his own bull***t. Charlie offers some good examples of Obama's own Olympian self-regard. For instance: "I think I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters," Obama told him. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director." Though I immediately thought of this bit from New York magazine: Emanuel's ad-hocracy, meanwhile, didn't faze Obama. The president's friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett sometimes pointed out that not only had he never managed an operation, he'd never really had a nine-to-five job in his life. Obama didn't know what he didn't know, yet his self-confidence was so stratospheric that once, in the context of thinking about Emanuel's replacement, he remarked in all seriousness, "You know, I'd make a good chief of staff." Those overhearing the comment somehow managed to suppress their laughter. Obviously, Obama always has a healthy ego, in the same way Godzilla had a healthy physique and the sun has a healthy mass. But part of the problem stems from the fact that he cannot see the difference between campaigning and governing. That would be bad enough, if it were not for the fact that Obama seems to think that he ran his campaign. As I noted the other day in the Corner, here's Obama's response to the charge that Sarah Palin had more executive experience than he did: Barack Obama: Well, you know, my understanding is that, uh, Governor Palin's town of Wasilly [sic] has, uh, 50 employees, uh, uh, we've got 2,500, uh, in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. Uh, uh, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. Uh, so I think that, uh, our ability to manage large systems, uh, and to, uh, execute, uh, I think has been made clear over the last couple of years. Uh, and certainly, in terms of, uh, the legislation that I've passed just dealing with this issue post-Katrina, uh, of how we handle emergency management. The fact that, uh, many of my recommendations were adopted and are being put in place, uh, as we speak indicates the extent to which we can provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect. The remarkable thing about this is that there's no real executive experience in his explication of his executive experience. Yes, the candidate can fire people from the campaign. But being the candidate and being the campaign manager are as different as being the lead singer for Spinal Tap and being the band's manager. On the campaign trail, Obama's job was to "be Barack Obama," to sound smart and charismatic and rev up the crowds. He's still playing that part rather than fulfilling the job description. And no one will tell him. That's why, I suspect, when he went to check on the progress of the site's development he had no idea how to ask questions that would get at the reality of the situation. Bureaucrats, apparatchiks, and contractors blow smoke. That's what they do. Obama has no idea how to cut through the smoke. He thinks being president involves constantly going out and giving speeches to crowds that love him about how hard he's working rather than actually, you know, working. It's all very meta. He's playing president Obama because he doesn't know how to be president Obama. I think that when he went out on Monday and did his infomercial schtick in the Rose Garden -- Operators are standing by! It's not just a website; it's a floorwax! etc. -- he honestly thought he was fixing the problem. Well, I've done my part! Various & Sundry Not much to announce. No public speaking gigs scheduled. No new outstanding warrants. I will be on Special Report tonight (Friday). Now that Steve Hayes is back from his cruise and George Will is at Fox, I can only assume I'll be on a little less frequently. But I've had a nice run of late. Speaking of Zombies If there's one thing I can't stand, it's repeated blows to my kneecaps with a ball-peen hammer. But that's not important right now. Metaphorically, one thing I can't stand is when people think that mere science can dispel the threat of reanimated necrotic flesh in the form of the undead. Some guy from the U.S. Wildlife Federation says that zombies would be taken out by wild animals and bacteria. I don't mind criticisms of fantasy or sci-fi fare. But I can't stand it when people deliberately ignore the premises of the alternate reality. Wild animals don't eat (slow) zombies because their reanimated flesh is essentially poisonous. That is if the zombies are biologically undead. If their magically undead, they're magic. Everyone knows this. Undead-like but actually mortal (fast) zombies who are victims of, say, the 28 Days Later "rage virus" may well be of interest to bears and birds but such animals will probably stay away because such beings are just so surly. Everyone knows this. And then, of course, in Resident Evil-type situations the last thing you want is animals partaking of the flesh of the undead (h/t Dan Drezner). Switching from the undead to the inconvenient dead, anyone die in your house? What state do you belong in? Frankly I didn't like this quiz because A) I don't know how to describe myself, and B) it told me I should live in Florida which is crazy talk. Thanks, textbooks! Now this is awesome: high-speed pics of dogs shaking their heads. Oh, and why do you look like your dog? Telekinetic girl with crazy mom fact-checks Carrie. Various & Sundry Classic: A reader reminds me that I touted this around this time last year. Still the best Amazon reviews, ever. Foliage porn! (Note: There's nothing porny about this, it's just that "Foliage Porn" was the name of my band). Five gun myths Hollywood taught us. Stupid vain humans. Dog and Jaguar are best friends. Big cats getting stoned. Is it me or is there something really annoying about this guy's marriage proposal? Heckuva job, MSNBC. And, as always, if you need more of this sort of thing, there's always Debby! | 
Comments
Post a Comment