http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/ en Copyright 2008 Fri, 09 May 2008 20:13:28 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss AL HUNT: We begin the program with Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Senator, thank you for having us in your home. SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY (D-MA): Glad to be on your program again. MR. HUNT: Let's take some legislative issues first and then we'll get to politics. The rebate checks are going out; the economy is stuck in neutral. Is there a need for a second stimulus package? SEN. KENNEDY: Very definitely. And the fact that we've failed working families by not providing for the unemployment insurance, we ought to do something in terms of the food stamps. We ought to provide health and assistance to states to offset their increased pressure particularly in the areas of coverage of Medicaid. We ought to do more in terms of what they call the CDBG, the programs that help communities to deal with what's happening in our cities, primarily because of the impact of the recession. There ought to be this follow-on phase. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/kennedy_dismisses_dream_ticket.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/kennedy_dismisses_dream_ticket.html Bloomberg Fri, 09 May 2008 20:13:28 -0600 It's great to be back in Oregon. Over the last fifteen months, we've travelled to every corner of the United States. Now I know that if you listen to Washington or pay attention to the pundits, you hear a lot about how divided we are as a people. But that's not what I've found as I've travelled across this great country. Everywhere I go, I've been impressed by the values and hopes that we share. In big cities and small towns; among men and women; young and old; black, white, and brown - Americans share a faith in simple dreams. A job with wages that can support a family. Health care that we can count on and afford. A retirement that is dignified and secure. Education and opportunity for our kids. Common hopes. American dreams. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/obama_talks_economics_in_orego.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/obama_talks_economics_in_orego.html Barack Obama Fri, 09 May 2008 17:23:49 -0600 In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Sen. Barack Obama said something that is all the more remarkable for how little it has been remarked upon. In defending his stated intent to meet with America's enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: "I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did." That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/obama_needs_to_study_history_b.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/obama_needs_to_study_history_b.html Jack Kelly Fri, 09 May 2008 08:30:00 -0600 After losing two previously Republican-held seats in special elections earlier this year, House GOP aides worry their party is on the brink of an election year catastrophe, and as a key test looms on Tuesday, the party is already pulling out all the stops. House Republicans, sources say, are using every resource possible in advance of next week's special election to fill Senator Roger Wicker's old House seat, in northern Mississippi. The district should be no trouble to hold. President Bush carried the seat by twenty five points in 2004, and Wicker never had a problem holding on for re-election. But after Democrats picked up seats once held by former Reps. Denny Hastert, in Illinois, and Richard Baker, in Louisiana, and after the Democratic candidate in Mississippi narrowly missed avoiding a runoff election in the April 22 all-party first round, officials on Capitol Hill started to panic. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/house_gop_shifts_into_panic_mo.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/house_gop_shifts_into_panic_mo.html Reid Wilson Fri, 09 May 2008 07:59:25 -0600 WASHINGTON -- By the time Hillary Clinton figured out how to beat Barack Obama, it was too late. When she began the race in 2007 thinking she was in for a coronation, she claimed the center in order to position herself for the real fight, the general election. She simply assumed the party activists and loony left would fall in behind her. However, as Obama began to rise, powered by the party's Net-roots activists, she scurried left, particularly with her progressively more explicit renunciation of the Iraq War. It was a fool's errand. She would never be able to erase the stain of her original war vote and she remained unwilling to do an abject John Edwards self-flagellating recantation. It took her weeks even to approximate the apology the left was looking for, and by then it was far too late. The party's activist wing was by then unbreakably betrothed to Obama. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/no_apology_leaves_clinton_feel.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/no_apology_leaves_clinton_feel.html Charles Krauthammer Fri, 09 May 2008 00:50:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama -- the charismatic, weakened, patronizing, soaring, prickly, historic, inevitable nominee of the Democratic Party -- is now left with two related problems. First, Obama's own missteps, amplified by Hillary Clinton's negativity, have defined a narrative likely to follow him until Election Day. In politics, a narrative -- the widely held, sometimes-unfair shorthand that marks a candidate -- is difficult to shift. For Dan Quayle, it was fresh-faced intellectual vacuity. For John Kerry, it was a combination of hauteur and inconstancy. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/flag_pins_and_foolishness.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/flag_pins_and_foolishness.html Michael Gerson Fri, 09 May 2008 00:40:00 -0600 Virginia Senator James Webb should be the Democratic candidate for vice-president. Senator Barack Obama is close to winning the Democratic nomination for president. His overwhelming victory in North Carolina and virtual tie in Indiana, with a forthcoming tide of superdelegates, will bring him within a hundred votes of the nomination. Obama has victory in sight, unless the iron laws of arithmetic are repealed by superdelegates meeting in "smoke-filled rooms" in an age of "no smoking" edicts in air-conditioned retreats. Obama must soon turn to the choice of a running mate. The best choice, in my opinion, would be Senator Webb. To make the case, let's first dispose of two contrary arguments. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/obama_should_pick_webb_for_run.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/obama_should_pick_webb_for_run.html Gerald Pomper Fri, 09 May 2008 00:35:54 -0600 speech on child pornography and human trafficking around the world, right? It's not that John McCain's 20-minute indictment of these heinous crimes at Oakland University on Wednesday wasn't admirable.]]> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/is_mccain_trying_to_lose_michi.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/is_mccain_trying_to_lose_michi.html Susan Demas Fri, 09 May 2008 00:31:19 -0600 WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama's victory in the North Carolina primary was actually the second important election result for his campaign this month. The first, which has not received enough notice, was the triumph of Louisiana Democrat Don Cazayoux in the race for an open U.S. House seat despite an aggressive Republican campaign to link the moderate Cajun to Obama, liberalism and high taxes. That the Obama link did not bring down Cazayoux in a district that voted 59 percent for George W. Bush in 2004 will help reassure Democratic superdelegates from Republican-leaning districts that they can live with Obama at the top of their party's ticket. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/democratic_change_coming_to_th.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/democratic_change_coming_to_th.html E. J. Dionne Fri, 09 May 2008 00:30:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- From the beginning, Hillary Clinton has campaigned as if the Democratic nomination were hers by divine right. That's why she is falling short -- and that's why she should be persuaded to quit now, rather than later, before her majestic sense of entitlement splits the party along racial lines. If that sounds harsh, look at the argument she made Wednesday, in an interview with USA Today, as to why she should be the nominee instead of Barack Obama. She cited an Associated Press article "that found how Senator Obama's support ... among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again. I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on." http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/desperate_clinton_is_danger_to.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/desperate_clinton_is_danger_to.html Eugene Robinson Fri, 09 May 2008 00:30:00 -0600 "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on" than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has told USA TODAY. She cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." "There's a pattern emerging here," said Hillary. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that." http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/the_hillary_democrats.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/the_hillary_democrats.html Patrick Buchanan Fri, 09 May 2008 00:30:00 -0600 The 20th century had its share of economic downturns, but only two shook the modern economy -- and modern economics -- to the roots. The first of course was the Great Depression, widely interpreted at the time and afterwards (sometimes in quasi-Marxist terms) as a crisis of capitalism. Though not as convulsive, the second was the decade-long slough into which the world economy sank beginning in the early 1970s. What marked this second slump was the seeming failure of all the economic prescriptions that had cured, or were thought responsible for curing, the first. Here then was a crisis of welfare-state or managed capitalism: a challenge to the Keynesian vision of fine-tuned economic growth, of a world in which economic science had subdued the business cycle. In this crisis, the Keynesian recipes followed since the New Deal--and associated with three decades of vigorous economic growth, full employment, and price stability--no longer seemed to work. The 1970s brought a cocktail so startling-- sustained low growth, inflation, and unemployment-- that it necessitated an ominous new term: "stagflation." Real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, after growing 3.2% a year from 1962 to 1973, sank to a 1% annual growth rate from 1974 to 1982. Whereas prices had risen at less than 2% per year from 1960 to 1965, inflation rose to nearly 6% annually from 1966 to 1978, and then soared to double-digit yearly rates from 1979 to 1981. Productivity gains fell to a paltry 1% a year after 1973; and unemployment climbed to 8.3% in 1975 and 9.7% in 1982. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/economics_and_the_entrepreneur.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/economics_and_the_entrepreneur.html Carl Schramm Fri, 09 May 2008 00:30:00 -0600 When President Bush visits Israel next week, he should offer to bring that ally fully into the U.S. missile defense network - a step that might forestall an Israeli attack on Iran this year. Two of the most strategically minded Members of Congress I know - Reps. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.) - have enlisted 63 colleagues to urge the move as Bush prepares to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding. Specifically, the bipartisan group is calling on Bush to give Israel the advanced X-band radar system that would enable Israel to knock down Iranian missiles early in flight. ]]> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/in_visit_to_israel_bush_can_pr.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/in_visit_to_israel_bush_can_pr.html Mort Kondracke Fri, 09 May 2008 00:30:00 -0600 Imagine this. You've built the better mousetrap. (Because lasers and pneumatic tubes are cool, let's imagine it uses them.) You've persevered through years of trial and error in your garage, enduring sleepless nights, the mockery of friends, the eye-rolling of family, and the non-lethal laser wounds to the family cat. But it was all worth it. You take your invention and, with your last few pennies, manage to bring it to market. It's a smash hit. It starts flying off shelves. You earn back the investment in raw materials and maybe something close to compensation for your time. Now you're ready for the big payoff. There's just one thing left to do: make an appointment with the regional Reasonable Profits Board to find out how much of your windfall is reasonable for you to keep. Picked by Congress nominally for their expertise in analyzing the mousetrap industry but actually for their vampiric lust for entrepreneurial blood, members of the Reasonable Profits Board will determine how much of your already-taxed profits cross the "rational threshold." Now that's the American dream! http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/the_windfall_profits_tax_slap.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/the_windfall_profits_tax_slap.html Jonah Goldberg Fri, 09 May 2008 00:27:10 -0600 Note: This piece appeared first in the May/June 2008 edition of Foreign Affairs. The world is far more peaceful today than it was 15 years ago. There were 17 major civil wars -- with "major" meaning the kind that kill more than a thousand people a year -- going on at the end of the Cold War; by 2006, there were just five. During that period, the number of smaller conflicts also fell, from 33 to 27. Despite this trend, there has been no drop in the number of wars in countries that produce oil. The main reason is that oil wealth often wreaks havoc on a country's economy and politics, makes it easier for insurgents to fund their rebellions, and aggravates ethnic grievances. Today, with violence falling in general, oil-producing states make up a growing fraction of the world's conflict-ridden countries. They now host about a third of the world's civil wars, both large and small, up from one-fifth in 1992. According to some, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq shows that oil breeds conflict between countries, but the more widespread problem is that it breeds conflict within them. The number of oil-producer-based conflicts is likely to grow in the future as stratospheric prices of crude oil push more countries in the developing world to produce oil and gas. In 2001, the Bush administration's energy task force hailed the emergence of new producers as a chance for the United States to diversify the sources of its energy imports and reduce its reliance on oil from the Persian Gulf. More than a dozen countries in Africa, the Caspian basin, and Southeast Asia have recently become, or will soon become, significant oil and gas exporters. Some of these countries, including Chad, East Timor, and Myanmar, have already suffered internal strife. Most of the rest are poor, undemocratic, and badly governed, which means that they are likely to experience violence as well. On top of that, record oil prices will yield the kind of economic windfalls that typically produce further unrest.]]> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/why_oil_wealth_fuels_conflict.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/why_oil_wealth_fuels_conflict.html Michael Ross Fri, 09 May 2008 00:22:13 -0600