South Dakota Politics

Quote of the Day

Unanimous defeats do not in and of themselves prove that the administration’s position was wrong in all these cases. Sometimes, even a unanimous Court can be wrong. Still, when the president’s position in multiple major constitutional cases cannot secure even one vote on an ideologically and methodologically diverse Court that includes two of his own appointees, it is likely there is something wrong with the administration’s constitutional worldview.

Volokh Conspiracy

A Failed Presidency

It’s no secret that the President is not at the height of his popularity.  His approval rating hovers somewhere between forty-five percent (that’s Rasmussen, mind you) and a disastrous thirty-six percent (Reuters).  All the polls except Rasmussen show him at least ten points in the negative.  If the occupancy of the White House was determined by Nielsen, Mr. Obama wouldn’t be renewed for another season.

There are, however, other tests involved in a complete diagnosis.  One I might call the Beinart test: can the President hold on to an independent minded, moderate to slightly left of center Democrat?  Since Peter Beinart actually exists, we can apply the test and it too produces a negative result for the President. 

Sooner or later, honest liberals will have to admit that Obama’s Iraq policy has been a disaster. Since the president took office, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has grown ever more tyrannical and ever more sectarian, driving his country’s Sunnis toward revolt. Since Obama took office, Iraq watchers—including those within his own administration—have warned that unless the United States pushed hard for inclusive government, the country would slide back into civil war. Yet the White House has been so eager to put Iraq in America’s rearview mirror that, publicly at least, it has given Maliki an almost-free pass. Until now, when it may be too late.

Beinart’s piece is a pretty damning tale of diplomatic neglect.  The present civil war might have been avoided if the Administration had pushed harder for an agreement that would have allowed 20-30,000 U.S. troops to remain in Iraq and if they had put pressure on Prime Minister Maliki to maintain a more inclusive government. 

This account is perhaps not damning enough.  As this blog pointed out back in 2008, Candidate Obama pressed the Iraqi government to delay signing a status of forces agreement with the Bush Administration.  The motive for that was obviously to deny Bush any last minute victory and thus bolster Obama’s campaign.  That might have been forgivable if Mr. Obama had managed to get such an agreement himself once he took office.  As Beinart shows, it is hardly clear that this President ever seriously tried to do that. 

A second and more severe diagnostic tool in the pundits quiver is the Milbank Test.  Is the President still relentless protected by journalists on the left who mostly write like partisan hacks?  In his recent column, Dana Milbank wrote what maybe the most scathing personal comment on Mr. Obama that I have read (at least coming from the left). 

On June 14, Sunni rebels threatened Baghdad after seizing much of Iraq — and President Obama fearlessly played a round at the Sunnylands Golf Course in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

The next day, the militants posted pictures of their mass execution of Shiite members of Iraq’s security forces — and Obama boldly teed off again, at Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s Rancho Mirage estate.

These split-screen scenes were reminiscent of the weekend in March when Russia was about to annex Crimea. Obama played golf both Saturday and Sunday at Key Largo, Fla.’s Ocean Reef resort with former NBA star Alonzo Mourning and former NFL player Ahmad Rashad.

It’s enough to make one wish the president would take up a different pastime — like, say, stamp collecting.

Or, dare one suggest it, trying his hand at being President?  This habit of playing golf while the world burns is bad enough on the face of it but it also takes one of Mr. Obama’s favorite clubs out of his bag: the “I’m not Bush” iron. 

CBS News’s Mark Knoller, the unofficial statistician of presidential activities, reports that Bush played golf only 24 times while in the White House; Obama is up to 177 and now has a round-a-week habit.

Milbank notes that Bush 43 gave up golf entirely after the Iraq invasion.  Say what you like about his policies, President Dubya could at least pretend to be a serious man.  Mr. Obama doesn’t seem to understand the distinction. 

These stories confirm what this blogger has been arguing since 2009: not that Mr. Obama is a bad President but that he is a good anchorman, and little more.  That was enough to get him elected twice.  It was not enough to provide leadership to his administration and, without that, all that comes out of the White House are the results of shifting alliances of aides and lobbies.  What doesn’t come out is coherent policy.

It may be that the President’s approval ratings have fallen about as low as they can go.  There is a stock of strong partisans for both parties who rarely give up.  Even Democrats, however, say (48 to 39%) that the President has not clearly explained his goals in Iraq and only fifty percent of Democrats think that the President’s policies have made the U.S. safer.  No one asked them if they thought the President had goals or policies. 

The Man Who Wasn't There

Someday someone will write the definitive history of the Obama Administration.  It won’t be yours truly, but I have surely got the right title: The Man Who Wasn’t There.  It’s catchy and resonates with the famous poem and with a movie starring Billy Bob Thornton.  Best of all, it pretty much tells the whole story.  The rest of the book would be one long footnote. 

One place the President wasn’t, much of the time, was the President’s Daily Brief.  The PDB is where the President is supposed to be briefed on serious threats to national security.  George W. Bush rarely missed one.  Marc Thiessen reported in 2012 that Mr. Obama shows for less than half of his own PDB’s.  His attendance fell even more as the election neared.  In the weak before our ambassador was murdered by terrorists in Benghazi, Mr. Obama didn’t show for a single one.  He skipped another meeting the day after the attack to meet with grieving members of the State Department.  He had no time to reschedule, since he had to fly off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas. 

Might things have turned out differently if the President had been properly briefed in the week before the attack?  There is no way to be certain, but the British pulled their own ambassador well before the violence in Benghazi.  Did the Brits know something we didn’t know or was it just that they were paying attention?  We do know that there were warnings of violence for months and that the Ambassador himself requested more security.  We have been told that Mr. Obama didn’t know about these requests.  I believe it. 

We have been told that those responsible for the ambassadors’ murder will be brought to justice, but if any progress has been made on this front, the Administration is keeping it a secret.  Days after the attack, CNN reporters entered the compound and found Ambassador Stevens’ diary on the floor.  Apparently no official investigators had arrived.  Are they there yet? 

What happened in Benghazi is apparently standard procedure for this Administration.  The President launched a series of air strikes against the Libyan regime while he was on a “relationship-building trip” to Brazil.  What exactly is that?  Here’s a hint: it didn’t involve anything as dreary as treaties, agreements, or negotiations.  It was all about Latin America and Barack Obama loving one another.  It may be first war ever started while the President was on Spring Break. 

He very nearly launched a second one for not paying attention when he himself was talking.  When you and your subordinates frequently say that the leader of the Syrian regime must go and when you draw red lines about chemical weapons, you may discover that you have accidently actually said something.  That in turn might obligate you to act.  When the President did show up to a meeting, he let the heads in the room talk on but didn’t seem to be doing much listening.  According to the New York Times: “he often appeared impatient or disengaged while listening to the debate, sometimes scrolling through messages on his BlackBerry or slouching and chewing gum.”  So we almost ended up siding the Syrian rebel movement just as that movement was being captured by Al Qaeda, because the President was playing Angry Birds. 

Things haven’t gotten any better.  A year ago the President announced a new counter terrorism strategy, to replace the post 9/11 policies initiated by George W. Bush.  But according to the Washington Post, “much of the agenda he outlined remains unfinished or not even begun.”  The President said he was looking forward to engaging Congress on the issue, but even Congressional Democrats admit that there has been little follow-through from the Administration. 

No one should be the least bit surprised, then, that this Administration could successfully spring an American soldier from the clutches of the Taliban and do it in such a way as to leave everyone wondering whether the folks in the White House can be trusted to tie their own shoes.  Allow me to stipulate that, whatever Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl may or may not be guilty of, bringing him home to be judged here instead of by the Taliban is a worthy objective.  Critics of the exchange are right to point out that we say we don’t negotiate with terrorists and nothing demonstrates our resolve on that point like negotiating with terrorists.  It also reminds our enemies that we care a lot more about individual human lives than we do and reminds everyone that this is a weakness on our part.  We are what we are, however, and the Israelis, who are a lot tougher minded than we are, make the same kind of exchanges. 

So perhaps the President couldn’t help paying such a sordid price for Bergdahl’s release, but he didn’t have to announce it in the Rose Garden.  He didn’t have to say that it’s a “pretty sacred” rule that we never leave anyone behind when, if the worst about Bergdahl is true, we used to bring such fellows home and shoot them.  The President’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, didn’t have to say that Bergdahl “served with honor and distinction”, though telling bald face lies on Sunday morning news shows seems to be her special talent. 

It now seems pretty clear that Sergeant Bergdahl lost his faith in his mission in Afghanistan and expressed that loss of faith by walking away from his fellow soldiers and towards the enemy.  Whether he is responsible for the deaths of some of our soldiers or not, he certainly cost our military the time and resources they spent on looking for him.  It also costs us five captured cutthroats that the Pentagon clearly did not want to see released.  Even if this gaggle of foes is no longer useful on the battlefield, Mr. Obama has now turned them into Taliban Superstars.  This is the kind of thing you try to do in the dead of night, not in the Rose Garden.  This has to leave of a lot of the men and women under Mr. Obama’s command wondering in their Commander-in-Chief is a tuna fish sandwich. 

Then there is this little matter of the law and the Constitution.  Releasing prisoners from Guantanamo Bay without giving Congress thirty days notice violates the law.  Does the law not matter to our President or did no one bother to check?  Even if he decided he had to act swiftly because Bergdahl was in peril, he could at least have informed the leaders of both houses of Congress.  He didn’t, perhaps because he doesn’t trust the Republican leader of the House.  This one time teacher of Constitutional Law might have reflected he is not an autocrat and that the war powers are shared with Congress.  That, however, would have required reflection. 

STEM hype isn’t rooted in fact

I have been remiss at posting Pierre Capital Journal columns here.  This is the lastest.  Here's the intro:

Gov. Daugaard recently went to Girls State and gave the young ladies terrible advice.  The governor told them not to bother with liberals arts degrees, such as philosophy, and instead get a technical degree.  This, he said, would give them a better chance at a job.  

What if this is false?  That is the claim of Harvard-based researcher Michael S. Teitelbaum writing in The Atlantic.  Teitelbaum notes that after a number of studies, “No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations that require bachelors degrees or higher.”  The studies indicate that the United States is producing more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) college graduates each year than it creates in STEM jobs.  Matthew LeBar, of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, reports that while 11.4 million STEM degree holders work in non-STEM jobs, there are only 277,000 openings in STEM-specific jobs.