Jeb is clearly the smartest guy in the family Bush. He even looks different from the others.
Our poor current president is tanking across the board. Of course he has to fire the disrespectful rogue general-hero, but the dissing is hurting him nonetheless. It’s not like the leaders of other countries respect him much these days, and his speech about the oil spill was flatly irrelevant to the crisis at hand. Obama’s words are getting boring, because it turns out he still hasn’t figured out that governing mainly ain’t about persuasive or inspirational talk.
Now, if and when the Republicans get Congress back, the challenge of divided government may make our president better (as it did President Clinton). Or maybe it won’t. If it doesn’t, the Republican need to save our country by providing a credible alternative. Romney–Americans still don’t feel the love and the Mormon problem is unfortunate but real. Mitch Daniels–a very competent but too uncharismatic a governor (base energizing may be an issue). Jeb–will he remind us of the executive incompetence we associate with his family? Or will he combine what was classy about W with a undeniable record of competence? Jeb should be “in the mix,” at least.
June 23rd, 2010 | 2:19 pm
Romney’s healthcare problem will kill him this time around, not his Mormon problem.
GOP dieharders want someone who can preach fire and the sword against Obamacare. Romney isn’t that guy.
June 24th, 2010 | 7:07 am
Romney is the best choice, but he probably won’t make it. A mature, experienced, rational man doesn’t stand a chance in the current political culture. Sarah Palin will fire people up on both sides, and she’ll be lucky if she gets 52% of the vote. An Obama-Palin campaign will be a bloody madhouse. Sure, put Jeb in the mix. Just like his brother, he has been the governor of a large state, and that is still the best training for the Presidency. We’ll see how he stands on the issues. My guy is Romney, but I will be happy to vote for Palin.
June 24th, 2010 | 10:33 am
Rawls hurts my head and leaves me depressed so thanks for this delightful interlude.
I do sense the hope and yearning that went into these comments…the measured remarks of an introspective Neocon,.
Sadly, I must take issue and in so doing I’m reminded of what the affable Rev. Jesse Jackson said many years ago, a comment that may be apropos: “Let’s stay outta the Bushes!”
Peter, I think the Neocon/RINO faction, of which the Bush family are leading figures, are going to be swamped by the Tea Party people even if it splits the right and even if it means electing ‘independents.’ But, if it splits the right it’ll be because the Neos take revenge.
Anecdotally, the GOP primary winner here in Ohio’s 6th Congressional District called my wife and I and asked what it was “we” wanted. We told him the repeal of Obama’s legislation…all of it, and he quite agreed…amazing!
June 24th, 2010 | 3:05 pm
Please let it not be Palin…Please let it not be Palin…Please let it not be Palin…Please let it not be Palin…Please let it not be Palin…Please let it not be Palin…Please, Please, Please, Please let it not be Palin!
I am a despiser of Palin haters, and honestly an admirer of many things about “our Sarah,” but it seems my feelings about the possibility of her being the nominee are, well…strong!
And yeah, Eric is my middle name…’tis the same Carl here.
P.S. Adam nails it on Romney.
June 24th, 2010 | 5:01 pm
Seems like we’ll have a lot of the same conversations.
I like Romney personally. But the second the public starts discussing Mormon beliefs….he’s toast. People think Mormonism is weird even though they know nothing about it. As soon as they learn, they’ll freak. I’m just saying.
Palin’s a clown.
Obama gets re-elected after he’s energized after the GOP takes congress.
June 24th, 2010 | 6:35 pm
Obama might be tanking, but the evidence of public opinion is mixed. Since the beginning of the year, Obama’s approval rating in the RCP average has drifted between 47.0 and 50.1 and that is remarkably stable. As of today, 6/24/2010, Obama’s approval is at the very low end of the range and it is quite possible that Obama is about to break into a new and lower range, but the data isn’t in yet. But so far, it is striking how high Obama’s approval ratings are given the very adverse circumstances.
I don’t think Daniels’ biggest weakness is charisma. His biggest weakness is the distrust of social conservatives he is earning with his truce talk (I’ve written about this at tiresome length over at No Left Turns if anybody cares.)
But Daniels’ strengths are considerable. Daniels was able to implement market-driven health care reforms (for government workers and the poor) and control Indiana’s budget without cutting core services. Daniels’ record in Indiana allows him to be not only the best critic of Obamacare but also the best spokesman for market-driven health care reform. Most importantly, Daniels is in the best position to survive the inevitable Democratic counterattacks. Daniels would be able to point to his Indiana record and show that he was able to save the government money, decrease personal health care costs (for government employees) and all without hurting health outcomes. This puts him in a better position than say a Paul Ryan, whose arguments would be abstract and people would be being asked to give up something real (the current employer-based health care system) for something notional. Daniels would be able to offer reality-based refutations of Democratic scaremongering. As a good steward of Indiana’s budget and services during the same difficult times as Obama’s presidency, Daniels is in a good position to take on Obama’s spending, borrowing, taxing, and (proposed) corporatist cap and trade policies.. Daniels’ record in Indiana would be a huge strategic asset in a general election.
Romney – Adam is right that talking his way out of the family resemblance between Obamacare and Romneycare will be a bigger problem than religion. But Romney works real hard, has great organizational skills, will have lots of money, will probably earn lots of institutional support, and is willing to say anything he needs to (including renouncing his own health care plan if thats what he decides he needs to do) in order to win. I’m not counting him out for the nomination.
Huckabee – By far the most likeable and as Ross Douthat pointed out, he has been the best spokesman for populist anti-bailout antistatism. He has issue issues on the Fair Tax (this is a huge one) and maybe the Middle East.
June 26th, 2010 | 7:40 am
The undeniable strengths of Daniels as an executive probably don’t translate into winning primaries. I wouldn’t mind be wrong on that. Who is the TEA PARTY candidate anyway? I, with Carl, hope not Palin, who has turned herself into a celebrity. I hate Palin haters, but… Huckabee might actually be a good president, but he disagraced himself in the second part of his last campaign and may also be more of a celebrity than a credible leader at this point. Obama is more tanking as a competent executive than in the actual polls, as Pete says. Plus he will remain a formidable campaigner and so, no matter what’s actually going on, very hard to beat.
June 26th, 2010 | 6:02 pm
Palin haters? Could you even imagine if McCain won and this MESS in the Gulf happened with “drill baby drill”??? Just think about all the bad press Obama got for merely saying that “the record on offshore drilling was good”. and as much as i hate to see the money lost because of the moratorium on off-shore drilling (due to the slow analysis of the a bureaucratic process) I think Obama is being smart because this disaster is beyond quantification.
On a slightly separate but more relative topic…. I never hear you talking up Ron Paul, whose revolution seem more necessary than ever. Honestly I see Ron Paul’s policies would have, to to get back to my original topic, been more efficient and effective to the main LIBERTARIAN PREMISE that governments main policy is to PROTECT its citizens meaning that the agencies in charge of keeping us safe would be the only facet of large government. I think the newly minted “Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement” would have not needed this superfluous name and would have done its job before a disaster took place. Maybe I am just being dramatic but I think Ron Paul and his libertarian idea should be talked up and not another BUSH!
June 27th, 2010 | 1:45 am
“Jeb is clearly the smartest guy in the family Bush.”
It’s one thing to be a big fish in a small pond, but now we’re looking in a fish bowl. America can do better.
June 28th, 2010 | 8:51 am
So isn’t Nietzschean libertarian an oxymoron? And there’s nothing more libertarian than the right to drill, and no libertarian is in favor of a huge regulatory scheme to keep us safe from any conceivable danger. The libertarians are all about heroic entrepreneurial risk. (Especially confused Nietzschean libertarians like Ayn Rand.)
June 28th, 2010 | 9:50 am
What form of government then would be best at creating agencies such as the “Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement” that could help us prepare for situations like this in the gulf? I have trouble believing either democrats or republicans are the answers.
June 29th, 2010 | 3:11 am
Before you suggest Ron Paul as a savior, let me suggest that you look at actual life in Ron Paul’s congressional district as it is lived. The so-called taxpayer’s (not citizen’s) “best friend” has been nothing other than a self-aggrandizing presidential candidate grandiosely confused in his Randian libertarianism. His Rousseauvian dreams of American autarky feed his dreams of antileader leadership in a nation that becomes entirely like his own constituents–i.e., the drugged out denizens of a Philip K. Dick novel.
Ron Paul’s message appeals to the entirely a-political surfer/margaritaville/get rich quick scheme population who thinks freedom is being able to smoke a joint without getting harassed. True, Ron Paul is not a true Nietzschean (he has no knowledge of “deadly truths” in his gnostic belief in his own will to power–he’s the true sorcerer’s apprentice), but many of his constituents are, albeit in a nice, “laid back” and stoned way.
Of course, I overstate the case–the people of Galveston/Brazoria county are generally good and self reliant people–as the rebuilding after hurricane Ike shows. While you daily hear stories of Katrina, Ike is forgotten, even though it ranks second to Katrina in terms of damage. Why? people ’round here took care of themselves. When Paul voted against emergency federal relief funds for his own district, the people around here applauded–but these are the same people who think Galveston Island has a right to secede (though, secede from what, I’m not quite sure). Nonetheless, they could use some federal funds, but apparently it is better for New Orleans–N.O. is sexier, and Yankees love to go there and gamble, get drunk, and find prostitutes and have what they like to call a “southern” experience.
In such a situation Ron Paul is able to live his southern confederacy version of Ludwig von Mises where Lincoln is a tyrant (and a racist to boot) all the while living in complete aloofness to his constituents. He spends more time campaigning for his son Ayn Paul than he does in his own district. In comparison, Ron Paul’s world makes technocratic, managerial, liberal statist democracy look like a New England townhall meeting. He is a king who can float his asinine theories to the many as some sort of democracy and liberty–the best of American traditions.
Of course, Ron Paul keeps getting elected in his excessively gerrymandered district. His constituents simply want a best friend regarding taxes, and Ron Paul uses this as a platform for pursuing his silly and at times sinister politics.
June 29th, 2010 | 8:45 am
So Ron Paul is a crazy old man loved by young geeky guys living in their parents’ basements.
June 29th, 2010 | 10:02 am
Wow. Okay well my parents dont have a basement so I guess I’m good on that front. And I am sorry if I offended John Presnall… I usually enjoy his comments. Personally I know nothing of Ron Paul’s district or his potentially very stoned constituents. However, I don’t really know what that has to do with his policies? I understand the insinuation that Libertarianism is a form of utopian idealism. I also think this entire topic about Nietzschean Libertarianism is important and should be delved into with much greater vigor. I think the “deadly truth” aspect of Nietzsche’s idea as i found most recently highlighted in Strauss’s Note on Beyond Good and Evil, is taken too lightly here. Strauss claims that philosophy and religion for Nietzsche are more important even a higher plane than morals and politics so to merge the two seems like a straw man argument. Personally I don’t mix my “3rd person perspective” with either my first or my second due to the fact that the third person perspective is a deadly truth that doesn’t help politics or personal mores. I would hope that John could delineate between a political ideology whose potential I see as almost imperative at this point in US history vs. a “life giving deadly truth” which in stoic fashion i recognize and ignore.
June 29th, 2010 | 8:52 pm
I can’t believe you guys are so dismissive of Sarah Palin. She is the only candidate with the potential to roll over all of the other Republican candidates. Do you remember her speech the night McCain introduced her as his running mate, and her acceptance speech at the convention? Pure dynamite! Pat Buchanan seems to think that she’s getting all of her ducks in a row. Don’t underestimate her.
June 29th, 2010 | 9:26 pm
Sara’s not preparing herself to be president. She has the potential, I agree. But she’s pure motion right now, and no match for Obama. (She wasn’t even a match for Biden, do you remember?)
June 29th, 2010 | 9:59 pm
Sarah will be more than a match for Obama in 2012. I look forward to her debates with Obama. She’ll be genuine and appealing, and he’ll be the same empty suit he always has been. It’ll be like Reagan vs. Carter.
June 30th, 2010 | 2:04 pm
Obama is a formidable debater not because he knocks you out with great one liner, but because he is really good at framing the issues in a order to appeal to the median voter while projecting both self-control and mastery of the issues. The idea that Palin will clobber him in debate is probably a conservative fantasy (though that is not to say she is destined to be outclassed, just that expectations should be in check.)
I thin Palin did okay in the debate against Biden. The points where she was weakest (on health care for example) were also the points where McCain was weakest because the McCain campaign seemed to have made the decision not to defend or explain on those issues. If she sometimes seemed to be leaning on “team of mavericks” soundbites rather than policy substance, she was at worst no worse than her running mate and it was McCain’s strategery that she was following. Aside from flubbing a few interviews (“But other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?), Palin’s big problem during the campaign was that her background made her an ideal reformist candidate, but her running mate insisted on running an identity politics campaign which left her having to sell attitude and background (she is a hockey mom don’tchaknow) rather than a relevant agenda. It actually worked okay for about a week (if the polls are to be believed), but then the financial crisis hit and people wanted to hear more about economic policy than whether Obama called Palin a pig in secret code (remember the meme the McCain campaign was shopping.) McCain had nothing to offer but earmarks, Joe The Plumber, a tax plan not even McCain believed in, and maybe making some Cuomo a financial regulator. That also meant Palin (who was a less than one term governor, and who had neither the time nor the authority to craft her own national economic agenda) also had nothing. Having said all that, I don’t think Palin has put herself in the best position to either be the next Republican presidential nominee or o wi the next general election. She has however put herself in a position to make alot of money with little accountability to the median voter in either Alaska or the US in general.
July 1st, 2010 | 10:07 pm
Ben, I was more ranting against Ron Paul than offering an offensive/defensive parry to your mention of Paul.
However, if I understand you rightly you took my jumbled remarks to confuse politics and morality with religion and politics. Perhaps this was the case, but I was suggesting that Paul, at least on the surface, does not do this. In so doing, I don’t think he has thought through his position clearly enough. He offers some seemingly obvious responses to current problems (even if politically difficult), but doesn’t think through the deeper religious and philosophical antecedent reasoning it seems to me to presuppose. It is Paul–it seems to me–who is relying on the necessity of a falsehood in light of deadly truths. Even if he is sincere in his belief in “the revolution,” it seems to be based on dubious grounds. As far as I know, he does not base his argument on divine revelation–I suppose that would be his saving grace.
The empty version of liberty that Paul offers–let me be free from “you” and/or the “government”–has bad consequences for the character of the good citizens of his district. They become free to act in ways that “don’t hurt anyone” but which seem to avoid the Millian emphasis on self perfection. Perhaps I’m a snob, but I tend not to be of the opinion that sitting around smoking dope provides the social and political conditions necessary for one to lead a good life. It is not a life worthy of being a member–let alone sacrifice. Unfortunately, it tempts some to seek a return to anarchy for the sheer sake of having meaning in life–even if it means a return to Texas frontier conditions in its sheer joy of destruction. Shootin’ guns for fun becomes more than just a pastime.
That said, I’ll happily (but prudentially) side on a more Paulian and libertarain argument in the current situation of Obama statism, but there must needs be more than simply let me free.
Peter, there are strictly speaking no basements on the Texas Gulf Coast. Instead, one lives beneath a house on stilts, but this garage space underneath serves the same function as a basement, i.e., playing video games, indulging in weird conspiracy theories, smoking dope, and basically avoiding taking on a life worthy of human decency. But at least on is free!
July 4th, 2010 | 11:45 am
I apologize in advance if my response is overly repetitive or abstract.
1. I don’t know anything about pauls religious ideology.
2. I don’t know anything about the character mores or philosophic externalities of a libertarian ideology
3. Nietzsches deadly yet life giving truths have a pervasive effect on everything and the fact that libertarian ideology might in some way reflect that is as Nietzsche says the first adherence to a creed proves nothing against it
4. The government whether repub or democ is failing. It’s so complex that it’s creating risk beyond recalcitration this is a big deal.
5. Something must be done whose prudentially can no longer be called utopian idealism.
6. Don’t get me wrong there is a lot about libertarians I don’t agree with but thT should be dealt with systematically not reduced to they want to be free.
7. Nietzschean libertarianism is an oxymoron but not because of the reason you think.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact