ABOUT-FACE
“Barack Obama’s great virtue is his ability to behave like a cynical politician without getting a reputation as a cynical politician,” Holman W. Jenkins Jr. writes at www.opinionjournal.com.
“The latest example is his left-pleasing promise during the campaign for a windfall oil tax, now quietly removed from his transition Web site. Explained an aide, the tax was all along meant to apply only if oil prices are over $80 a barrel. ’They are below that now and expected to stay below that.’
“Mr. Obama here makes a choice in favor of good economic policy. But there’s something else going on. He’s a student of the late radical thinker Saul Alinsky, who argued that you do or say what’s necessary in a democracy to gain power, while keeping your true aims to yourself. Mr. Obama’s novel contribution has been to turn this exploitation on his supporters on the left (who admittedly are so wedded to their hero that, so far, they don’t seem to mind),” Mr. Jenkins said.
“His next big challenge is an upcoming conference updating the Kyoto targets. Mr. Obama has not backed off his overwrought climate rhetoric, but listen carefully to Al Gore. Now that Democrats are on the verge of power, he’s backing off cap-and-trade and carbon-tax proposals (i.e., visible energy-price hikes for consumers) in favor of a new approach - massive government subsidies for ’green technology.’
“Two fans, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaustell, co-founders of the Breakthrough Institute, write approvingly of what they call Mr. Gore’s highly ’significant shift.’ ’He knows that cap-and-trade, and most any new regulation, would raise energy prices - a political nonstarter during a recession.’
“Uh huh. Mr. Gore, when he’s close to power, always drops the politically unpopular medicine his climate views would seem to necessitate. When he ran for president, he tried to lower gasoline prices by opening up the petroleum reserve. There was no recession at the time.”
BIRTH OF CONTROVERSY
“The continuing efforts of a fringe group of conservatives to deny Obama his victory and to lay the basis for the claim that he is not a legitimate president is embarrassing and destructive. The fact that these efforts are being led by Alan Keyes, a demagogue who lost a Senate election to the then-unknown Obama by 42 points, should be a warning in itself,” David Horowitz writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).
“This tempest over whether Obama, the child of an American citizen, was born on American soil is tantamount to the Democrats´ seditious claim that Bush ’stole’ the election in Florida and hence was not the legitimate president. This delusion helped to create the Democrats´ Bush derangement syndrome and encouraged Democratic leaders to lie about the origins of the Iraq war, and regard it as illegitimate as Bush himself. It became ’Bush´s War’ rather than an American War with destructive consequences for our troops and our cause,” Mr. Horowitz said.
“The birth-certificate zealots are essentially arguing that 64 million voters should be disenfranchised because of a contested technicality as to whether Obama was born on U.S. soil. (McCain narrowly escaped the problem by being born in the Panama Canal zone, which is no longer American.)”
A HEAVYWEIGHT
“Last week, the world was taken by President-elect Barack Obama´s new foreign policy team: Hillary Clinton as U.S. secretary of State and Bob Gates, who is being kept on as head of the Defense Department,” Albert R. Hunt writes at www.bloomberg.com.
“Both choices are remarkable. There hasn´t been anything approaching the selection of Sen. Clinton since 1980, when Ronald Reagan offered the vice presidency to old rival and ex-President Gerald Ford; in contrast, the Clinton appointment is probably a good idea,” Mr. Hunt said.
“Only a year ago, a central theme of the Obama insurgency campaign was his opposition to the war in Iraq. Imagine if it was suggested then that he would win the election and keep President George W. Bush´s defense chief. This is a testament to both Gates and to the recent U.S. success in Iraq.
“Yet the most impressive, and perhaps important, choice may have been Obama´s tapping [retired] Gen. James Jones to be his national security adviser.
“In his own right, Jones, 64, is as formidable as the other two heavyweights. He´s a retired four-star general; a highly decorated 40-year Marine veteran; a former commandant of the corps and supreme allied commander of NATO forces. He also rejected Bush´s overtures for positions, including deputy secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“He looks the part. If there were a movie about this team, the 6-foot, 4-inch, broad-shouldered Jones would play himself, now that John Wayne is gone.”
Unlikely pundit
“When Eliot Spitzer is brought up in polite conversation, political differences notwithstanding, the following words are likely to be said: tawdry, amoral, narcissist, hypocrite, angry, holier-than-thou and grand-stander,” Russ Smith writes at www.splicetoday.com.
“I wouldn´t use, at least on charitable days, any of the preceding to describe the successful web site Slate, the online publication founded by the prescient Michael Kinsley (originally bankrolled by Microsoft and now owned by The Washington Post Co.) in 1996, which has to some degree replaced Time and Newsweek as a journal for left-center political punditry, arts criticism and outstanding sports writing,” Mr. Smith said.
“Nevertheless, Slate´s appointment of Spitzer, the disgraced former governor and attorney general of New York, as its biweekly economic and government guru - charged with explaining to mere mortals how the United States can extract itself from the current economic crisis - does not inspire confidence that Slate, as it exerts increasing influence on a public that has forsaken print media, is reaching maturity with much grace.”
Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or e-mail Greg Pierce.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.