Word Association Presidential Style

Presidential periods can be summed up in single words, and I don’t just mean presidential agendas. I mean in the broader scope of things. You can define an era using single words and do so remarkably well. At this point, I think we can define Obama’s era, so let’s do that. In fact, I think you’ll find his word to be surprisingly fitting. Read on.

Before getting to Obama, let’s back up so you can see what I mean. The word that described Jimmy Carter’s administration was “malaise.” Everything seemed to be grinding to a halt and nobody cared about anything. There was a real sense that the world’s better days were behind it and everyone was just waiting for the lights to go out. If you don’t believe me, just watch a few episodes of Barney Miller and you’ll get the vibe of the era. . . rundown, resigned, defeated. People even talked about the Presidency being too big of a job for one man.

If I had to pick a word for Reagan’s era, it would be “deregulation.” Reagan privatized government functions, slashed regulations, and devolved power to the people. But most importantly, Reagan instilled the idea that America was a do-it-yourself nation and we didn’t need Washington telling us how.

Then came Bush Sr. His word was “multilateral” because he wanted everyone to hold hands and play follow the consensus on everything from budgets to war, which is exactly how horrible, gutless decisions get made. It’s a thousand points of pathetic if you ask me. Fitting with Bush’s timid mindset, this was the age of “consensus leadership” in management schools, as if there can be such a thing. . . leading from behind.

Bill Clinton’s word was “pretend.” Heh heh. Good old Bill did what anyone married to Hillary would have done... he pretended he wasn’t married and he dragged a $10 bill through a trailer park and a cigar through an intern. But Bill was hardly alone in his peckerdilloes, hence, this word defines his era. Indeed, the people who pursued him so obsessively had likewise been buggering the interns as they pretended they were Christian soldiers in good standing. Bill friends and biggest supporters were all Hollywood types, i.e. the land of make-believe. His foreign policy was make-believe as well as he pretended that launching a couple cruise missiles would wipe out terrorism. The stock market was all pretend too as companies with no prospects of ever making money were valued higher than the world’s greatest cash cows. . . tech-bubble make-believe.

W’s word was “incompetent.” Bush took office under a cloud of incompetence in our electoral system as we got to watch some truly incompetent people count hanging chads. Then Bush stepped in with incompetent political messaging combined with an incompetent defense of conservatism, incompetent handling of regulations, incompetent handling of Iraq and Afghanistan, and incompetent handling of budgets. But he wasn’t exactly alone. Incompetent car companies and banks collapsed after incompetent regulators assure them of bailouts. Why? Because they made loans to people who weren’t competent to pay them back and they traded in these things even though they weren’t competent to understand them and their insurers weren’t competent enough to value what they had insured.

And now we know Obama’s word: “frustration.”

In a broader sense, Obama’s term has been nothing but frustration: people are frustrated finding jobs. They are frustrated that their homes lost value. They are frustrated there is nowhere to invest. They are frustrated that nothing seems to want to get better. Europe is frustrated by its never-ending Eurozone crises. The world is frustrated by pirates, petty dictators with nuclear missiles, and a never-ending supply of terrorists.

Obama specifically has been huge on frustration. He frustrated moderate/conservative whites who thought voting for him would mean a shift to the right for the Democrats, an end to racial strife, and a less polarized political system. That didn’t happen because Obama has zero ability to create consensus or to work with those he doesn’t like. He is polarization personified. Conservatives have been frustrated by a budget that has gone out of control, Obama’s destruction of our healthcare system, and our inability to win the public to our side.

Liberals are frustrated because Obama can’t seem to pass anything they wanted. And some of them are starting to realize that (1) this is because Obama is lazy and (2) this is because the Democrats are lying about their intent to pass things. Think about the things Obama dangled before their selfish eyes:

● universal medical coverage
● an assault weapon ban, gun registration, and an assortment of measures to slowly end the private ownership of guns
● cap and trade
● an end to corporate privilege
● ending too-big-too fail and regulating big banks
● gay marriage
● illegal alien amnesty
● an equal pay law for women
● national back-door unionization through the NLRB
● and so on...

So far, all he’s delivered has been money for big business and a “healthcare” plan that puts people at the mercy of big insurers. . . something even his supporters are seeing as a pending disaster. Beyond this, leftist journalists are getting frustrating dealing with him personally. Late-night comedians have been frustrated by their inability to poke fun at such a soft target. Foreign governments are getting frustrated at the constant sleights and uncooperativeness of Obama’s administration. Leftists are frustrated that they sold their souls to this man with the idea being he would stop things like drone attacks and global warming and now they are being played.

I suspect that looking back at this period in time, future historians will call this period a Dark Ages for leadership, with the exception of Reagan. But even before we get to that, I think we’ve found Obama’s word... frustration. Watch for it as we move to the end of his term.

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Should All Nominees Be Supported?

Should a political party’s nominee always be supported? Generally, the answer is yes. A political party is a collection of people whose views overlap enough to give them a common interest in getting each other elected. To that end, they form a party with the implicit agreement that they will compete with each other to represent the party and then will support the nominee regardless of the outcome of the competition. Thus, the nominee should be supported. But there is an exception.

This exception arises when (1) the nominee’s views are well outside the range of common interests which hold the party together, and (2) there is a legitimate belief that supporting this nominee will harm the long term goals of the party.

On the first point, Reagan famously said that he could support anyone with whom he agreed on 80% of the issues. Reagan was making the point that it is foolish and counterproductive to require 100% agreement with a nominee before you can support them. Indeed, 100% agreement is probably impossible. Hence, this is the reason moderates should support conservatives and conservatives should support moderates and libertarians should support social conservatives and vice versa.

But Reagan’s point also contains the implicit understanding that at some point (possibly below 80% using Reagan’s formula) there is no obligation to support the nominee. Why would this be? For that, we need to look at the question of harm.

Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to ensure their products remain consistent. They want to make sure you find the exact same amount in each cereal box, that every batch of Mac and Cheese tastes the same, that every sock has the same number of stitches, and that every Acura uses only Acura parts. Why? Because having a consistent level of quality affects how people perceive their brands. People want to know exactly what they are getting when they make a purchase and branding achieves that -- whereas failing to maintain that consistency damages the brand because people will no longer know what to expect from their purchase.

Whether we like the idea or not, a political party is nothing more than a company, and its product or brand is an ideological range. Choosing a nominee from outside that range blurs the identity of the party and damages its brand.

How? For one thing, this will alienate supporters. Supporters expect nominees to be within the ideological range. When they aren’t, the party has violated the contract under which it claims a right to the individual’s support. It is the equivalent of McDonalds selling you a Big Mac container but including a ham sandwich rather than a burger. This is a violation of trust.

Moreover, this confuses voters. When a person represents a party or ideology, their views become associated with that party or ideology and their successes/failures taint the ideology. In other words, the nominee redefines how the public views conservatism or liberalism, and their meanings change. Hence, conservatism and Republicanism came to be associated with Nixon’s views in 1968, Reagan’s views in 1980, and Bush Jr.’s views in 2000 -- I exclude Bush Sr. because he claimed to be a moderate. Liberalism, by comparison, came to be associated with FDR, LBJ, Carter, and now Obama. Clinton called himself a moderate.

Prior to LBJ, the majority political view of the nation was FDR-liberalism. This could have continued indefinitely, except LBJ disgraced liberalism. His errors in Vietnam and his monstrous Great Society wiped out the Democratic party in the South and set the stage for a conservative resurgence. Jimmy Carter finished liberalism off by proving that Democrats are reckless spenders, incompetent managers of the economy, and militarily inept and cowardly. This set the stage for Reagan.

Reagan’s success revived conservatism while also redefining it back to its roots -- away from the big-government conservatism of the Nixon years. By the time Reagan left office, conservatism had become the natural ideology of the country and 60% of the public believed it.

This could have lasted for generations, except along came George Bush Jr. He wrapped himself in the conservative label and set about running a big government, civil-liberties-crushing, crony-capitalism, foreign-adventuring administration which so thoroughly discredited conservatism that in 2008, the voters were more radically liberal and more willing to accept liberalism than they had been at any time since LBJ. The ONLY THING THAT SAVED CONSERVATISM was the election of Barack Obama. If Obama hadn’t proven to be such a disaster, conservatism would be dead today. But Obama was a disaster and he caused a massive backlash which took the form of the Tea Party.

The lesson here is simple.

Ideologies get defined by their leaders and they get punished for the sins of their leaders. If a nominee calls himself conservative but acts like a liberal, the public doesn’t blame liberalism for his crimes and failures, it blames conservatism even if that person never once acted like a true conservative. Thus, Bush and Nixon, neither of whom could be called conservatives, discredited conservatism. LBJ/Carter/Obama, each of who were progressives and not liberals, discredited liberalism. And in each case, the only thing to save conservatism/liberalism was pure luck that someone worse came along to discredit the other side. If Moderate Joe Democrat had come along after George Bush Jr., we could well be looking at an America that views liberalism as the natural order of things and sees conservatism as meaning reckless spending, bad economic management, and cronyism.

Moreover, the nominee need not even be as disastrous as a Bush/Obama to harm the ideology. The goal of politics is to effect long term change in the country. That is simply not possible when the person representing your ideology holds views that are inconsistent with the ideology. This muddies the ideological waters and confuses the differences between the parties. In other words, when the Republicans and the Democrats both push the same solutions to the same issues, voters will come to believe there is no difference, and they will either stop voting or they will pick the party that promises them the most loot -- advantage Democrats.

This is what happens when you pick someone who is far outside the acceptable ideological range for the party or who happens to be insane. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if Newt or Santorum or Romney or Paul are so far outside the bounds that you should not support them, but ask yourself: “how bad would it be for the party, for my beliefs, and for the country if conservatism came to be defined in the way ____ sees it?”

Winning elections is important, but you don’t want to sacrifice the future to win a single election.


By the way, there's an interesting poll out which shows that 33% of Republicans want a new candidate to jump into the race. This is down from 68% only two months ago. I think the field is set.

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Democratic Administrations Seem Less Stressful

Ever notice that life is less stressful when the Democrats hold the White House? Actually, I’m serious. I’ve lived through several now and I can honestly say that the country seems much more at ease when the Democrats are in charge. Bear with me as I try to figure this out (or bare with me if you prefer).

Honest Jimmy Carter

My first real experience with a Democratic President was Honest Jimmy Carter. Good times, let me tell you.

Sure, we had 7.6% unemployment, 13.5% inflation, falling incomes, gas lines, labor strikes and the such, but that’s part of life. Anyone who says differently is just expecting too much. . . or so the media constantly assured us. Besides, Jimmy was such an honest man that you couldn't fault him. At least, that was the standard media motif.

With nothing to worry about, there were no nasty movies about Carter either. In fact, if I remember correctly, Hollywood was largely apolitical at the time, except for the occasional movie attacking Nixon. Oh, and the music. . . the apolitical music?! Great stuff!

The Evil Ronald Reagan

Then came Reagan. Man, the Reagan years were tense. The economy was crap. Sure, he got unemployment down to 5.2% and inflation down to 1.9%, but those weren’t real jobs. The real jobs were vanishing at an alarming rate, leaving us to sell hamburgers to each other. . . and our Japanese masters.

What caused all of our jobs to vanish? Greedy corporate types, all personal friends of Reagan, would forcibly buy our prosperous companies and part them out just to make a quick buck. I remember seeing a film about this. In fact, I recall a bunch of films attacking this horrible thing called mergers and acquisitions, and vulture..., er, venture capital.

And don’t forget what Reagan did to us with his debts! He sold our futures! Deficits of around 3% of GNP?! What was he thinking? (For cynics who note that Obama’s deficit is 12.6% of GNP, all I can say is that it was a different time and 3% meant more than it does today.)

Fortunately, there was strong oversight. The media kept on him day. . . after day. . . after day! He may have been made of Teflon, but that wasn't going to stop them. And who can forget all those Congressional hearings to investigate every single thing Reagan or anyone in his administration did (or didn’t) do! Even Hollywood and the music industry strove to point out how horrible Reaganomics was over and over again.

Oh (almost forgot), Reagan was dangerous too. He dreamed of getting us killed. He wanted to start a nuclear war! At least, that’s what a dozen movies (like Dreamscape) told us. . . and the protesters chanted. . . and a few Congressional Democrats proclaimed. . . and a bunch of singers sang about. It is any wonder things were so damn tense!

Heartless George Bush

Then we got Bush. He wasn’t Reagan, but he wasn’t much better. Bush brought us the wars that Reagan always wanted. He attacked Iraq to get its oil. In fact, I remember protestors screaming this daily, and of course Hollywood and the music industry backed this up in their films and music. The media did a great job of investigating this too. . . constantly. As I recall, they really dug into the idea that he sold Iraq the very weapons they would use to kill so many American soldiers and he encouraged Iraq to attack Kuwait, a ruthless dictatorship of the kind that Bush favors, just to cause the war. True evil there.

Man, wasn’t it funny when he threw up in Japan? How many times did I see that on television!

Bush also gave us junk bonds, increasing the pace of jobs disappearing, and the S&L crisis -- caused by his nephew Neil Bush! He brought us the age of the never-ending Independent Counsel. And he created homelessness to kill poor people. Robert Redford told us so himself (Sneakers anyone?). I’m pretty sure the media backed Redford up on that. I don’t recall exactly, because there were so many stories about the 200 million homeless that it got a little confusing, but I think they did confirm it.

Very tense times.

Good-Natured Rogue Bill Clinton

Bush gave way to Clinton and things changed. Sure, Clinton loved women, but man was he a good guy. He was the Great Communicator II, the greatest politician of our time!

Let’s see, great economy, budget surpluses, nothing happened overseas. He ended homelessness. Sure, there were more mergers during the Clinton years than the Reagan/Bush years, but those were good mergers. They made America efficient.

Unlike Bush, Clinton never sold any influence. At least, I don’t recall hearing about that in the media.

Strangely, the number of films about presidents dropped off to almost nothing during his term. In fact, Hollywood largely went apolitical again, hmm. But that’s not to say they were playing favorites just because they were all FOBs. . . we got their word on that. Plus, don’t forget, they did do that one film about Clinton being a good-natured rogue who loves McDonalds. I remember a good deal of consternation in the media over that.

I don’t recall any protest music. But then what would you protest? He only used the military where it was absolutely necessary -- when the safety of the United States was at issue. . . like in Yugoslavia, and Somalia, and Haiti. And unlike Bush, whose failures led to a second Gulf war, Clinton solved the Somalia and Haiti problems completely -- or if he didn't, we never heard about it. He would have solved that Al Qaeda problem too, if the Republicans had let him. And you can't really blame him for Rwanda, no one knew what to do about that.

All in all, it was a very tension free time.

Bushitler

But all that changed when Bushitler stole the election and imposed himself upon us. I don’t even know where to begin with Bushitler.

Look at the problems he didn't solve in Rwanda, Somalia, and the genocide in Darfur!

And I’m not saying he caused 9/11, but I read that he knew about it and he didn’t call the airport to stop those guys because he wanted to create an incident to let Dick Cheney’s firm take Iraq’s oil. I don’t have any facts to back that up, and neither does the media, but I seem to recall reading that daily in real newspapers. I guess, sometimes the truth transcends the facts.

Seriously, was there anything he did right in Iraq or Afghanistan? Not according to the media, or Hollywood, or the music industry, or the protestors, or Democratic Congressmen, or Senators, or governors. And wow was Hollywood busy with movies about Bush and Iraq. The music industry too (how unfair to attack the Dixie Chicks for saying what everyone in the media was already saying).

And that was just the beginning. He tried to kill black people when he caused Katrina. He destroyed our economy, causing an unemployment rate that reached almost 7% -- no economy can survive with an unemployment rate that high, and the President is directly responsible for unemployment. . . except Obama and his 10.5%, that’s not his fault.

Bushitler also generated a massive deficit of around $200 billion! And don’t even think of comparing Obama’s $1.4 trillion deficit to Bushitler’s, they just aren’t the same thing. In fact, they're so different that the media doesn't even bother making the comparison.

Don’t forget Bushitler forced an entire generation of soldiers to develop mental illness and to become homeless. Everybody lost their homes! He let AIDS run wild in Africa, and, let’s be honest, he was stupid. How many times did I hear that! Probably every day. And didn’t he cause a school shooting?

Thank God he’s gone. Too tense.

Barack “The Messiah” Obama

Finally, we have the Obamatopia of today. What pleasant times. Sure there’s 10.5% unemployment, but that’s to be expected -- employment always lags in a recovery. We have $1.4 trillion deficits, but that’s Bush’s fault too, and those should drop again in 5-10 years. The dollar is falling, but that’s good for the stock market.

We’ve had no mass shootings and no terrorist attacks that have made the news. We have no homeless, and all of our soldiers are fine again. Foreclosures have stopped. We have no racial strife, except that racist cop. AIDS in Africa has ended. He solved Darfur. Obama brought peace to South America, I don’t think we’ve heard a peep out of Chavez in some time. . . certainly no criticism from him. Our relations with the Middle East are great, or so we're told.

What’s not to like? In fact, times are so good that most journalists have little to do except report what Obama tells them. I don't think I've heard a body count since Bush left office? And I guess the media dropped their demand to film caskets coming home. Who needs the stress of seeing that!

Hollywood too seems to have become apolitical again, except for the few films honoring Obama. Of course, the television industry also has worked hard to help Obama out with bringing us together and doing a few good things.

All very stress free.

My Point

Ok, enough. I think you get my point. I am actually being quite serious when I say the world seems less dangerous and less contentious when the Democrats are in power. For most people, it does. And there is a reason for that: the Democrats’ fellow travelers in the media and in the culture industry work to generate that perception.

They will savage Republicans on a 24/7 basis, including making things up when there is nothing to complain about. Angry films get cranked out, personal attacks are made nightly on television or in songs, Congressional investigations are held, and a chorus of hate arises all to keep the public on edge.

Why? Because the perception that life is contentious when the Republicans are in charge can be a powerful force to wear people out under Republican regimes, to get them to give Democratic another chance, and to keep fence-sitters voting for Democrats.

This is why it’s so important that conservatives reinsert themselves into the culture -- from Hollywood, to Madison Avenue, to the music world, to the media. We cannot allow this perception to continue unchallenged. It's like letting your competitor send people to your restaurant to bother the customers.

By the way, lest anyone suggest that the left is merely acting on principle, explain to me why they suddenly go silent on those same principles, and will ignore or forgo them, when the Democrats win the job? It’s all for show folks.

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