The Obamaklatura

The Obamaklatura
The president aims to make America more equal--and some Americans more equal than others.

By JAMES TARANTO

David Leonhardt of the New York Times--last seen (we are not exaggerating) touting National Socialism as a model for economic policy--is on more conventional ground today in praising ObamaCare as "the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago":

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor. . . .

A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders.

The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level--$88,200 for a family of four people.

Remember when Sen. Obama told "Joe the Plumber" he wanted to "spread the wealth around"? This might have been the most revealing moment in the campaign--and the mainstream media responded by investigating and vilifying the man who had the temerity to confront the candidate with a question.

Leonhardt's piece ends with an anecdote involving an Obama aide:

Before he became Mr. Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers told me a story about helping his daughter study for her Advanced Placement exam in American history. While doing so, Mr. Summers realized that the federal government had not passed major social legislation in decades. There was the frenzy of the New Deal, followed by the G.I. Bill, the Interstate Highway System, civil rights and Medicare--and then nothing worth its own section in the history books.

Now there is.

One might mischievously suggest that it's terribly unfair for one girl to get free tutoring from a supersmart economist who used to be president of an elite university and assert that Larry Summers is a hypocrite unless he takes steps toward the socialization of his own brain.

That, of course, is a reductio ad absurdum--fun but fallacious. The inequality that benefits children of smart parents is a product of nature (and of nurture, but nurture is also a product of nature). Leveling it by coercive means is beyond the ability of any but perhaps the most brutal totalitarian state.

But another story, broken yesterday by the Chicago Tribune, illustrates why "equality" isn't all it's cracked up to be. Unlike medicine, elementary and secondary education in the U.S. is already almost completely under political control. Defenders of this arrangement justify it in the name of equality. They do not claim the current system achieves that ideal, but they do insist that efforts to reduce political control via vouchers and other forms of privatization would make inequality worse.

But the Tribune story shows that political control introduces its own kind of inequality, to benefit the political class:

While many Chicago parents took formal routes to land their children in the best schools, the well-connected also sought help through a shadowy appeals system created in recent years under former schools chief Arne Duncan.

Whispers have long swirled that some children get spots in the city's premier schools based on whom their parents know. But a list maintained over several years in Duncan's office and obtained by the Tribune lends further evidence to those charges. Duncan is now secretary of education under President Barack Obama.

The log is a compilation of politicians and influential business people who interceded on behalf of children during Duncan's tenure. It includes 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard Daley's office, House Speaker Michael Madigan, his daughter Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.

Non-connected parents, such as those who sought spots for their special-needs child or who were new to the city, also appear on the log. But the politically connected make up about three-quarters of those making requests in the documents obtained by the Tribune.

This is "the aristocracy of pull," in Ayn Rand's memorable phrase. Its existence is probably inevitable inasmuch as government's is, but its extent can only increase with the power and reach of government.

If you and Larry Summers both get sick and need a treatment that the Medicare Advisory Commission (dysphemistically known as the Death Panel) deems too expensive, what are the odds that you'll find a way to get it anyway and he won't? How about the other way around? In the Soviet Union, those privileged by political connections were called the nomenklatura. Here, we can call it the Obamaklatura.

What in the World Is Michael Steele Thinking?
The second most depressing email we received after ObamaCare's passage came from the permanent campaign of John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking former junior senator from Massachusetts who by the way served in Vietnam. Kerry gloated about ramming ObamaCare through Congress despite "distortions"--which is to say, arguments--from opponents, which succeeded only in persuading the public, and who cares what they think?

Kerry promises more of the same:

Well, guess what--those same tactics will be deployed again by the obstructionists to stop the Senate from passing clean energy and climate reform.

Man, will they ever. But here's why I know we can win: A couple of weeks ago, you stood up for climate scientists, and the response was overwhelming. Thousands of letters poured into the inboxes of newspapers around the country, and the coverage of the attacks on climate science has changed noticeably.

But now we need to step up even more to counter the attacks.

Please contribute to help TruthFightsBack--step up to counter the lies.

They've attacked the climate science, and now they'll attack the legislation, trying to mislead people into thinking that it's not what it is: legislation that will create jobs, improve our economy, make us healthier and strengthen our national security.

The most depressing email we received was another fund-raising pitch, whose subject line echoed Kerry's message: "Keep the momentum going." Only this one was from Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee. What in the world could he have been thinking?

It turns out the "momentum" Steele has in mind isn't legislative but political. Here's his pitch:

The outpouring of support from Republican grassroots leaders like you has been extraordinary. In a little over 36 hours after Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats rammed their government takeover of health care down the American people's throats, the Republican National Committee has almost tripled our original goal of raising $402,010 to Fire Nancy Pelosi.

I'm grateful for your help, but we're not done yet. At 11:15 this morning, President Obama signed into law the Pelosi Health Care Takeover. This abomination means low-quality health care, higher taxes, and a declining standard of living for all Americans.

In response to President Obama signing this monstrous bill, the RNC is extending the Fire Pelosi Money Bomb for an extra 24 hours--that's 24 more hours to ensure our Party has the resources needed to defeat 40 Democrat [sic] Representatives and bring Nancy Pelosi's iron-fisted reign to an end.

So both sides are trying to raise money--that's politics. But that "Keep the momentum going" really rankles. Especially when the stakes are as high as they now are, the political message ought to be consistent with the policy message; and "Keep the momentum going" is exactly the opposite of the message the Republicans should be sending ("Stop the madness!" is more like it).

Another amateurish aspect of the effort is noted by liberal blogger Josh Marshall:

One party always wants to "fire" the other party's leaders. That's our system. But something seems little weird [sic] to me about the RNC's new Fire Pelosi website (which the official GOP.com website now goes to). Why is she engulfed in flames? Is she being roasted alive? Or suffering eternal damnation and hellfire? How big a demotion is she supposed to get?

Even for condemning the country to socialism and tyranny, isn't this excessive?

We have a more innocent explanation for the flaming imagery. We distinctly remember that when we were a little boy and grown-ups first introduced us to the idea of being "fired," we understood that it meant being deprived of one's job--but we imagined that the process somehow involved the application of an actual flame. To our mind, the flames in the Fire Pelosi image suggest this sort of childlike literalism more than any sort of violent intention.

Still, if the best you can say about a political campaign is that it is reminiscent of the mentality of a bright 5-year-old, a more adult approach is probably in order.

Partisan Death Match?
A new survey finds results that leaders of both political parties should find alarming:

The latest Fox News poll finds that 79 percent of voters think it's possible the economy could collapse, including large majorities of Democrats (72 percent), Republicans (84 percent) and independents (80 percent).

Just 18 percent think the economy is "so big and strong it could never collapse."

Moreover, 78 percent of voters believe the federal government is "larger and more costly" than it has ever been before, and by nearly three-to-one more voters think the national debt (65 percent) is a greater potential threat to the country's future than terrorism (23 percent).

The poll has results that either party could see as giving it an edge over the other. While only 35% "think the Obama administration has a clear plan for fixing the economy," and only 24% say congressional Democrats do, those numbers look spectacular next to congressional Republicans' 16%.

On the other hand, 65% "say the government has become too big and 'is restricting American freedoms,' " and 74% of independents take this side. That's bad for the Democrats, the party of bigger government than the Republicans.

As we noted yesterday, partisan politics in a two-party system is a zero-sum game. One party's losses always benefit the other. But although America's current two-party arrangement has proved remarkably resilient, its endurance is not inevitable. Right now, it seems to us, the Democrats are committed to pushing ahead with ruinous policies, and the best that can be said for the Republicans is that they are less committed to ruinous policies and might, if we're really lucky, manage to roll back some of the Democrats' worst excesses.

If the public anxiety in the Fox poll reflects reality--and perhaps even if it doesn't--then neither party's response has been sufficient. Zero-sum politics may turn into a partisan death match, which ends when one party goes the way of the Whigs. Or both of them do.

We Have a Winner
Yesterday's edition of Express, the Washington Post's free tabloid, featured on its front page a big photo of a smiling Barack Obama and the headline NO REST FOR THE WINNER. Subheadline: "Buoyed by his historic victory, Obama still faces a fight to sell his reform plan to the public."

"No rest for the winner": a curious literary reference. " 'There is no peace,' says the Lord, 'for the wicked.' "--Isaiah 48:22. This is often rendered as "no rest for the wicked," among other things in the title of a 1988 Ozzy Osbourne album.

Another relevant biblical passage does use the word "rest":

But the wicked are like the tossing sea,
which cannot rest,
whose waves cast up mire and mud.

That's Isaiah 57:20. Or, as the president himself put it last week, "I have said that is an ugly process."

Barack Obama Brings the Nation Together
"Everyone Agrees: Stupak Sold Out for Nothing"--headline, Washington Examiner Web site, March 23

Barack Obama, War Monger?
Yesterday we noted a debate of sorts about the similarities between Barack Obama and Lyndon B. Johnson. Newt Gingrich had commented that by passing ObamaCare, Democrats are likely to "have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years."

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, a columnist for the New York Times, falsely asserted that Gingrich was referring to the Civil Rights Act, forcing the Times to run a correction. Gingrich said he actually had in mind the Great Society.

This Politico story, though, raises another prospective LBJ-Obama similarity:

The best way to sell President Obama's war on terror? Hype hit lists and body counts, according to a new Democratic strategy memo out Tuesday.

Almost three times as many terrorists were killed in Obama's first year as there were in all of President Bush's second term, according to the memo from the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, with more than 600 killed in 2009 compared to 230 killed between 2004 and 2008. . . .

"For members of the public who are not following the war news closely, they may not know about our successes. This must change, both for substantive and political reasons," writes Andy Johnson, Third Way's national security program director.

The memo urges Democrats to learn the Vietnam War's key lesson: the battle for public opinion matters as much as the fight on the ground. "Without popular support, a war cannot be sustained. And while significant majorities currently back the President's approach, it is vital that Americans remain confident in the course we are on," Johnson writes.

When a Republican administration does this, Democrats and the media decry their "politicizing the war." This column has no objection to either a Democratic or Republican president touting his success, but the LBJ comparison makes us wonder if there isn't a problem lurking here for Obama with his own party.

Our view is that LBJ's actions in Vietnam damaged his party far more than any of his domestic initiatives did. LBJ's legacy was not only a war that America proved unable or unwilling to win, but a party dominated by pacifists and anti-anti-communists. After LBJ left office in 1969, the Democratic Party continued to dominate congressional politics throughout the Cold War, but voters never trusted it with the presidency (except for the anomalous post-Watergate election of 1976, the result of which was soon repudiated and long regretted).

There have been antiwar stirrings from the left wing of the Democratic Party. It's not out of the question that history will repeat, that come 2012 Obama will find himself leading a divided party, with a growing faction dissenting from his "war mongering" policies.

We Blame Global Warming
"March Weather Returns to Normal"--headline, Hartford Court Web site, March 24

If They Shake and Fall to the Floor, It May Be an Earthquake
"Ordinary Laptops Act as Earthquake Detectors"--headline, LiveScience.com, March 23

The Second-Cleverest Man Turned Down $2 Million
"World's Cleverest Man Turns Down $1Million Prize After Solving One of Mathematics' Greatest Puzzles"--headline, Daily Mail (London), March 23

'Sorry, Honey, It Broke as I Was Putting It On'
"Liberals Defeat Own Family Planning Motion"--headline, CBC.ca, March 24

Hey, Some Good News for a Change!
"Catholic Church Says Reported U.S. Cases of Child Sex Abuse Lowest Since 2004"--headline, WashingtonPost.com, March 24