Ronald Reagan

The Dark Arts of Politics has an undeserved bad rap.  To begin, let's quote the classic master:

My view is that it is desireable to be both loved and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both and, if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer to be feared than loved.

Next, let's quote the modern master: 

People react to fear, not love --they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true.  

While it doesn't hurt to give voters a positive reason to vote for you (and it frequently helps) the most important thing to do in any election is the make the voters hate the other guy more.  The Dark Arts are an absolutely essential component of any successful politcal campaign/movement. A brief history of successful recent Republican Presidential campaigns shows this to be so.

In 1968, the Presidential election occured against the failure of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.  Johnson's welfare policies, aided and abetted by local politicians like New York's John Lindsay, gutted economic activity in America's cities.  Various Supreme Court Decisions, also abetted by local politicians like Lindsay, gutted the ability of local police forces to fight crime.  Taxes, Crime, and Welfare were all up; the result was urban riots across America.  When citizens objected to this state of affairs, politicans like Lindsay called them racist.  In addition, the cultural excesses of the hippie generation horrified many more traditional Americans.  People legitmately resented what was happening around them.

Against this background, Richard Nixon realized that most Americans were ordinary people trying to raise their family and live a good life.  Americans deserved respect and would vote for a politician who gave it to them; that was the origin of Nixon's 'Silent Majority.'  Nixon was able to channel the frustrations listed above to form a new political coalition as blue collar Democrats abandonded their ancestral party in droves.

The contrast between the respective parties' conventions that year is telling.  In a (reasonably) orderly manner, Republicans nominated Nixon and adopted a party platform promising 'law and order' and 'peace with honor [in Vietnam].'  Democrats, by contrast, were barely able to nominate a candidate and had a riot outside their convention.  When one party has an orderly convention and the other has a riot, why shouldn't the non-riot party campaign on law and order?

In 1972, Democrats handed Nixon a gift by nominating the candidate of Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion on a platform of "Come Home America."  Republicans countered by pointing out that the Democrat Party "has been seized by a radical clique which scorns our nation's past and would blight her future."  Nixon won a 49 state landslide.  Need I say more?!?

Reagan's use of the Dark Arts are particularly fascinating.  In the context of the Machiavelli quote listed above, Reagan was one of the few leaders who genuinely made himself BOTH Loved AND Feared.  Reagan's sunny optimism and the fact that he was ultimately a successful President cause us to forget that he was also willing to play political hardball when he had to.

In 1980, shortly after the Republican Convention, Reagan appeared in Philadelphia Mississippi and gave a speech that has been taken out of context by liberals ever since.  In this speech, Reagan made the pedestrian statement that:

I believe in states’ rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we’ve distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment.

Taken in context, it's obvious this was a simple statement about the role of the Federal govt. in economic policy.  While the content of Reagan's statement shows no racial meaning, he had to know it would antagonize the left.  This statement led liberals to characterize Reagan supporters (and working class soft Carter supporters) as racist.  This, in turn, fed on the same resentments Nixon did in a much more subtle way.  On top of that, Reagan did it with a smile on his face.  Simply brilliant!

Reagan's re-election campaign actually used the dark arts far more liberally than his first race.  At the convention, in Dallas, Reagan's U.N. Ambassador assailed the moral equvalence of San Francisco Democrats: 

They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do - they didn't blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians - they blamed the United States instead.But then, somehow, they always blame America first.When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the "blame America first crowd" didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.But then, they always blame America first.When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn't blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.But then, they always blame America first.When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.But then, they always blame America first.

Kirkpatrick's truthful declaration was not the only instance of the Dark Arts in Dallas that year.  At a prayer breakfast on the morning of his acceptance speech, Reagan told 17,000 Texans about the absurdity of how, thanks to liberal judges

we passed a special law in the Congress just a few weeks ago to allow student prayer groups the same access to schoolrooms after classes that a young Marxist society, for example, would already enjoy with no opposition.

Finally, in an election that also saw the greatest postive ad of all time, Reagan's Bear in the Woods ad was one of the greatest examples of electoral fearmongering I've ever seen.

Moving along to 1988, it's worth noting that most of the hits on Dukakis were self inflicted.  No one told Dukakis to call himself a card carrying member of the ACLU, not care about his wife getting raped and killed, or ride around looking like a doofus in that tank.  That said, it's time to discuss Willie Horton.

One of the great myths of modern politics is that the Willie Horton ad was somehow racist.  It wasn't racist, it was about crime and Dukakis' record on that topic.  It's true that Horton was a convicted murderer.  It's true that Dukakis furloughed him 10 times.  It's true that Horton assaulted two innocent people.  It's also true that that ad would have been just as effective had Willie Horton looked like this guy.  How was this not fair game?

In 2000, John McCain already had a long running fued with the Religious Right over Campaign Finance Reform.  McCain was the one who threatened to shut them down if they got in his way.  They had every right to hit back.

George W. Bush successful re-election campaign was notable to students of the Dark Arts for two reasons.  First, the swift boat veterans played an essential role in getting out the truth about John Kerry.  While some of the claims of what happened in Vietnam were disputed (and never setteled), no one can deny John Kerry's activities when he returned from Vietnam.  Given that the man lied about what American troops did in Vietnam to the U.S. Congress, isn't this something the American people have a right to know?

Finally, 2004 is notable because, more than any time since 1864, Americans had a genuine reason to feel afraid.  While Democrats like to whine about this fact, the simple fact is that who will keep you safe was a legitimate topic for a devestating ad.

So what does this all mean?

1) Opportunities for the Dark Arts arise from genuine problems.  That's why we shouldn't feel bad about using them.  To use some examples from the past 40 years:

- Why shouldn't people be afraid of rising crime?

- Why shouldn't people resent welfare recipents living off their taxes while they struggle to get by?

- If some liberal judge wants to make them get their kids up an hour early so they can get bused to some far off school, why should they accept it?

- If a sitting Governor gives some convicted felon a weekend furlough, why shouldn't said Governor be held accountable?  Why is that racist?

- If a sitting senator votes against a critical homeland security measure, shouldn't he get called on it?

2) The left is the aggressor in the culture wars.  They're the ones who want to take God out of the public square.  They're the ones who want six year olds to attend gay weddings.  They're the ones proposing taxpayer subsidized abortion.  Why should we feel bad about fighting back?  The tactics the left hates so much basically involves us calling them out on who they really are and telling the public what they really want to do.  What's wrong with that?

3) George W. Bush's Anti-Terrorist policies have worked.  In the next year, Obama will face politically difficult decisions regarding Patriot Act renewal, Guantanamo Bay, and surging in Afghanistan.  If Obama continues Bush's policies, we should quietly work with him to give him the votes he needs in Congress while letting him take the heat from his base.  On the other hand, if he chooses to discontinue any of these vital policies, we should come at him with everything we've got.  If this happens, there should be no hesitation to point out that "Barack Obama does not care about Americans' safety.  It's too soon to tell how this will play out, but we should be prepared for either possibility.

4) We really do love America more than they do.  I know it's not politically correct to say, but after 9/11 conservatives did this while liberals did this.  A couple weeks ago Joel Stein (of all people) penned this amazingly perceptive and surprisingly honest column.  Stein admits:

Conservatives feel personally blessed to have been born in the only country worth living in. I, on the other hand, just feel lucky to have grown up in a wealthy democracy. If it had been Australia, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Italy, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Israel or one of those Scandinavian countries with more relaxed attitudes toward sex, that would have been fine with me too.

While his statement about sex was particularly pompus and obnoxious, this entire paragraph (and column) is revealing.  Liberals don't wear articles of clothing with American Flags; Conservatives do.

On a similar note, I would never have had my kids baptized by this guy.  I would never work with this guy on education.  That's why Michelle Bachman is my hero.

Ok, I've said a mouthful.  Comments on this one should be interesting.

Thoughts/Suggestions???

President-elect Barack Obama has laid out a plan to “create or save” three million jobs during his first two years in office. His plan is to increase government spending, deficit be damned, by at least $775 billion dollars over that same period. While the projects he plans to invest in are things that we Americans can all use, the stimulus plan will be a flop. Here’s how I got here:

Let’s start with the money. Obama plans to increase government spending without any increases in taxes, so that negates his use of PAYGO budgeting. At the same time, the total amount of money per job that he creates or saves will come out to more than $258,333 per job. There are business executives who don’t even make this money for their job, yet Obama, who has never held a private sector job in his lifetime figures the cost of a job to “create or save” at more than one quarter of a million dollars.

Any reasonable businessperson, like myself, will tell you that if it cost that much money to save a job, we would rather sooner terminate the job immediately. The problem here is that Obama and the other people in government have no real concept of what it costs to run a business, generally speaking. The purpose of a business is not to make customers happy or to employ as many people as possible. The end goal of a business is maximizing their profits and making their shareholders money. Those who do not live by that mantra of making money for the company and stockholders quickly go out of business.

The two things that the average person on the street does not realize are how much one billion is and how much one trillion is.  For the concept of one billion dollars, imagine that on the day of the birth of Jesus Christ you were given one billion dollars and had to spend $1,000 each day onward while gaining no interest, you would be still be spending money for at least the next 700 years.  By comparison, one trillion dollars is one thousand times one billion.

Second, according to the CIA Factbook, the current Gross Domestic Product (GDP, or the total value of all goods and services produced inside the borders of the United States) currently sits at $14.334 trillion. In other words the stimulus is only 5.4 percent of GDP. From here, that percentage goes down fast.

In the Highway Spending Bill that Congress recently passed, less than 26 percent of that money was spent within the first fiscal year. If this holds true, it then means that a value of less than one-and-a-half percent of the nation’s GDP will be infused in to the economy within the first fiscal year of the stimulus bill’s existence. For an economy that will be going in to a deep recession throughout 2009, this does not bode well for Obama.

The end result is an increase in inflation thanks to the increase of the deficit to a level that will approach or exceed two trillion dollars this fiscal year and a slow-to-respond stimulus bill that will actually, when implemented, cause the death of many jobs.

However, that is only half the story about Obama’s economic plans for America. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to get Obama to sign the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) which is Orwellian by name, but will cause considerable damage when implemented and enforced. Barring a miraculous filibuster by the Republicans in the Senate, America’s workforce will become unionized and small businesses will close their doors.

What’s more is that the unions will get the ultimate payback from the Democrats they helped get elected. Their membership and union dues received will increase which will give the unions considerable influence in American politics and with their membership. Also, the union bosses will be able to oversee how each of its members votes in a union election, bringing to an end the secret ballot. If the Senate Republicans cannot stop this bill, small businesses in the United States will either have to shell out more of their money to meet the demands of the unions or they will close their doors, or both.

If this comes in to play, the projections for an unemployment rate of nine percent will look good to Americans because the unemployment rate in the USA will be higher than at any time since Ronald Reagan’s first term following the horrific economic policies of Jimmy Carter. The only difference is that Reagan was able to lower the unemployment rate from its peak in December 1982 of 10.8 percent to 8.3 percent in December 1983 and ultimately to 7.2 percent the very month he won a 49-state landslide win against Walter Mondale. By contrast, Obama won his election with an inflation rate of 1.07 percent and an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent in November 2008.

Finally, research from economists at UCLA determined that the Great Depression lasted seven years longer because of the New Deal. Obama wants to implement the New New Deal almost from the moment he takes office. Considering that the double-digit unemployment rates did not end until 1943, this means that had the New Deal not been implemented by President Franklin Roosevelt, the Great Depression would have ended in 1936 leading to an easy reelection.

The reality is that Obama doesn’t have the luxuries that FDR had when he was President, yet he wants to take us back to the past with an economic policy that exacerbated and extended this long economic slump. If this plan flops (and it will), just like FDR, Obama will come back with a sequel of New New Deal II which will be used as a means to “save” his job during a time of economic distress.

If the Republicans are able to do anything, it will be to vote against the stimulus package and to attempt to block the EFCA. Should this happen, they will have the ability to say that these things are prolonging the economic crisis and that they fought it all the way. If not, they will be on the same side of the line as Obama and the Democrats in 2010 and again in 2012 which could pave the way for two terms of economic agony.

It’s almost crunch time and the Republicans need to fight the expansion of big government early and often, then turn around and use it as a means to defeat Obama and Obamaism when given the opportunities to do so in 2010 and 2012. If not, they will become a permanent minority party with previous successful Presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan as distant memories of what was once great about America, but never will be again.

It’s time for the GOP to be ready to fight Barack Obama when he’s wrong (like on these matters) and Obamaism. 

"Cutting taxes increases economic growth, which in turn increases government revenue."

I have heard that phrase more times than I can count from more Republicans than I even remember.

It has been the central theme with which the Republicans have built their reputation, and basically the only thing that they have done in Washington that has matched up with their rhetoric.

There's a problem, though. And I want you to keep in mind when I say this, that I am a libertarian-Republican who would just as well like to see the income tax abolished. I repeat, I hate taxes, and if it were up to me I would lower them as far as possible - so if you somehow take this article to mean I am advocating tax raising, or increasingly progressive taxation or anything of the kind, please take a Valium and come back to read the article again later when your hysteria has gone away. We need to talk seriously about public policy if the Republican party is ever going to climb out of its hole.

Now, here's the secret. It doesn't work like that.

Oh, mind you, the economic growth argument is certainly true. You allow people to keep more of their own money, and you will in fact see a growth in consumer spending, which will lead to growth in business, and so on and so forth.

But, then we come to that tricky part about "growing government revenue". This, sadly, is not actually true - and if the Republican party wants to govern well when it eventually gets back into power (notice I said govern well, not "keep power") they need to understand this, so they don't repeat the same foolish mistakes they made in the 2000s.

To prove what I'm talking about, lets start by talking about the Laffer Curve.

The Laffer Curve is central to the ideas inherent in supply side economics. In its most basic form, it is a bell curve that describes points where tax revenues are their highest, and when raising or lowering those rates will increase or decrease revenue to the government.

It argues that there is a point where once you start increasing taxes, you actually do not increase revenue, because you are actually punitively taxing people to the point where it decreases their incentive to work, thus lowering revenues overall as fewer people contribute taxes or climb up the income ladder.

Similarly, if you are in such an area of the bell curve (obviously, to the right of the crest) and you cut taxes, you are actually going to increase revenue to the government because more people will have a reason to work, and those people who do work will see higher profits which will allow them to re-invest into companies and employees, allowing them to hire new people and grow their business, which will of course increase new tax revenue going to the government.

But, what Republicans have long ignored with their (justifiably) militant stance on taxation, is what happens when you go to the left of "t" on the Laffer Curve. Ah yes - taxes go down, but at that point so do revenues. According to the holy grail of supply side economics, there is a point where you lower taxes that it will no longer garner you increased revenue.

Just think of it logically. If taxation was set at a 5% flat rate on income nation wide, do you really think lowering it to 4% would result in more money flowing to the federal government? No - of course not, because at that point the capitalists who are in the private sector churning out the products and services of the economy don't see much of a difference in their bottom lines to a 1% drop in their income tax. It might provide for a little additional money to spend on a small project, or hire a few people, but in terms of the economy, its a small drop in the bucket that won't end up leading to more revenue for the government - all that will happen is the lower tax rate will mean less money streams into the government.

Laffer believed that. Reagan believed that. Any self-respecting supply sider who really knows what the philosophy is about believes it. I believe it. Its just how it goes.

So the question really is - what is "t". In other words, what is that magic point on the Laffer Curve where tax revenues are optimized for their greatest revenue benefit to the government.

We need to identify that not to set our tax rates there, but instead so we can identify what will happen when we cut taxes.

When Ronald Reagan took office, the upper tax bracket in this country was 70%. That's right, seven out of every ten dollars you made were you in that bracket went to the government. The 1981 tax bill dropped that number significantly to 50%. When he signed the 1986 tax reform bill, that top rate dropped to 28%.

Obviously, cutting taxes when they sit at 70% for the top bracket is likely to spur growth, expand business, and lead to (after some time) more tax revenue streaming into the government due to the increased availability of capital that has expanded the tax base.

But, where is that "t" level? Is it lower, or higher than where George W. Bush found it in 2000 (top bracket was at 39.6%).

I think that as time has passed, it has become rather obvious that we are in an area of the Laffer Curve that is to the left of the "t" line, which of course means that cutting taxes are likely to decrease revenue.

The best way to measure the effect of a change in tax policy is to compare tax receipts as a percent of GDP, because with a naturally growing economy (as ours is), we will basically always take in more in tax receipts than we did the previous year due to that growth, so that doesn't tell us much. What we need to find out is if a tax cut/raise has increased receipts as a percentage of GDP, or decreased it.

If tax cuts lead to revenue growth, then receipts as a percentage of GDP would end up going up. If they didn't go up, then the government would have received more revenue had taxes stayed where they were.

In other words, if taxes were at 35% and accounted for 30% of GDP the government would have collected a certain amount of money. If we then cut that rate to 30%, and tax revenues go down to say 28% of GDP, then we now know that while we are in fact gaining more tax revenue than we had the previous year, had we left taxes at 35%, we would have actually increased the amount of money coming into the government by more than we did get at 30%.

In real terms, if we collected 2 trillion dollars under 30% taxes, than we may have ended up with 2.3 trillion under a 35% scheme, because of how much, relating to GDP, that is.

And, that is exactly what has happened with the Bush tax cuts, which more or less proves the point that we are on the left side of the Laffer Curve.

Between 2000 and 2002 (post Bush tax cut), total receipts fell 10.3 percent relative to GDP, from 29.2 percent to 26.2 percent. The magnitude of that decline in total receipts since 2000 is unmatched since World War II, and it is directly related to the tax cuts. The 2003 acceleration of the tax cuts produced similar numbers.

So what does all this mean? Should we raise taxes so we can get near that magic "t" line and optimize our tax revenue?

No. Of course not - that is absurd. In fact, I'd love to see taxes whacked down further, by a lot.

What Republicans need to understand, however, is that their tax rhetoric is completely divorced from reality. Tax cuts are easy enough to sell to people without deluding yourself into thinking that the magic of economic growth will suddenly result in higher tax receipts. It does on the right side of the Laffer Curve, but not on the left side - and I think its obvious we are currently sitting on the left side of the curve.

Now, what tax cuts actually do, is grow GDP and expand economic growth. There is no reason to take that quantifiable, proven and true economic concept, and then pollute it by saying tax revenues would rise higher because of that expansion of GDP and growth. Again - yes, we'll get more revenue, but we won't be getting more as a percentage of GDP.

The only argument that can be made to the contrary is that GDP may increase so dramatically that even though receipts as a percentage of GDP go down, the growth of GDP means that lower percentage still accounts for a higher revenue amount into the federal government than a higher tax rate would have.

A fair argument, but the amount of growth of GDP would have to be ungodly for that to mathematically be true.

The faulty assumption that we have all been flying through life believing to our core since the 1980s is directly responsible for Bush's foolish budget management.

We are hovering around 11 trillion dollars of publicly held debt today (only to go higher with bailout after bailout coming down the pike) because we thought cutting taxes was the end all be all to economic policy. Why get your hands dirty cutting school lunch programs et all when you honestly believe your revenue stream will be better if you cut taxes anyway?

Its not. We can't just cut taxes and wash our hands of things. It doesn't work like that at this level anymore - not on the left side of the curve. Cutting taxes helps grow GDP and generates new economic activity, but at that level it is not increasing government revenue as a percentage of GDP, its decreasing it.

And that's okay. That's good, actually! We should love that, and want to see more of it. We should want to drive that Laffer Curve as far left as possible so that as many people can keep as much of their own money as possible.

But, by ignoring the actual effect of cutting taxes, it has left Republicans everywhere with the assumption that they won't have to get their hands dirty with that nasty business of cutting government spending. "Just cut taxes, and we'll get more money - we won't have to cut anything and make people mad at us", the compassionate conservative may say.

Idiocy.

Cutting taxes will decrease the growth of revenue into the federal government. Its an easy sell, no need to hamstring yourself by buying into the idea that we'll make more money by taxing people less. That may have been true during the 1960s Kennedy tax cuts, or the 1980s Reagan tax cuts, but we have reached an equilibrium now where that is no longer true.

So lets be honest with ourselves, and continue to advocate the slashing and burning of the tax code, but show the stones to actually do what will be necessary to do at the same time - cut spending.

The budget has to be balanced. We can no longer spend like this - its simply Chinese monopoly money at this point, and we have to start to retire the debt.

We'll never get there by cutting taxes, and then retiring to the study for a smoke and a congratulatory foot massage. We have to get elbow deep in the messy work of taking the red pen to the federal monster. We have got to cut taxes and also cut spending, to get our budget back in balance.

Cutting taxes and running away from the hard work is an ultimate act of political cowardice, and is one of the major reasons why George W. Bush's presidency has been a disappointment. When the GOP talks about cutting taxes to increase revenue so we can be "fiscally responsible", it has all the credibility of Hannibal Lector with a bottle of Chianti.

We all know it isn't true, not its time to be adults, be honest with ourselves about the reality of public policy, and push a fiscally conservative agenda that understands that reality and makes it work practically for the American people. Hack the tax code down as far as you possibly can, just understand what you'll be doing to the budget, and plan your spending accordingly.

Cut it.

Bottom Line Up Front: No matter what America's short term future holds (a liberal White House, a liberal Congress, etc.), the long term future of the conservative movement depends on our ability to evolve in substance and unify around principles, not personalities.

Anybody who blogs on this site can list the reasons why they're an American conservative. In fact, many conservatives who don't blog, or those who don't even know what a blog is, can list their reasons with an adequate level of logic in their explanation. But not every conservative is called to be part of a conservative movement; or, more importantly, not every conservative is attracted to be a participant of one or more parts of the conservative movement.

The reason I was attracted to the conservative movement as a student at the beginning of this decade was because I felt that the Right, significantly more so than the Left, had a better combination of message and infrastructure that could consistently win elections and legislative battles. One of the reasons why? It seemed to me at the time that the Right was a lot more concerned with principles than personalities when it came to political battles, the old cliche being that "Democrats fall in love, and Republicans fall in line." The Right has lost this advantage, not only because of the Democrats have successfully evolved their infrastructure to fit modern times, as Jon Henke notes; conservatives have also become intellectually lazy. Case in point: our movement's continuing love affair with Ronald Reagan.

the more they stay the same. I don't know how many people clicked on the link from the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web" regarding the debate between Ronald Reagan and John Anderson but I found it interesting reading.

Regarding energy policy Anderson states (remember that this debate was held in September of 1980) that

"....here are at least five reputable studies, one even by the American Petroleum Institute itself, that, I think, clearly indicate that somewhere along around the end of the present decade, total world demand for oil is simply going to exceed total available supplies."

Sound familiar?

Previously in the debate the Great One had said,

"We have nuclear power, which, I believe, with the safest. the most stringent of safety requirements, could meet our energy needs for the next couple of decades while we go forward exploring the areas of solar power and other forms of energy that might be renewable and that would not be exhaustible. All of these things can be done."

as well as

"When you stop and think that we are only drilling on 2%. have leased only 2% of the possible. possibility for oil of the continental shelf around the United States; when you stop to think that the government has taken over 100 million acres of land out of circulation in Alaska, alone, that is believed by geologists to contain much in the line of minerals and energy sources,..."

Nearly 30 years later our nuclear power plants are still being stiffled. The other forms of renewable energy have had that time to be developed and mature and yet they are stillborn. If a technology is economically feasible then it is profitable and it doesn't need government subsidies.

Read the whole thing; http://debates.org/pages/trans80a.html. It's a great insight into the past.

I have one quote of Mr. Reagan's that I can't help but include even though it doesn't bear on anything else. Just because it is so delightful and so telling. Responding to one of Anderson's points Mr. Reagan says,

"Well, some people look up figures, and some people make up figures. And John has just made up some very interesting figures."

Brought a smile to my face.

How can you tell the difference between a good politician and a great politician? Good politicians can succeed in good contexts, but can't change the context when things go south. Great politicians can alter the underlying context they operate under in their favor.

Many of us have wondered why John McCain can't seem to recapture the magic from his 2000 run. But maybe we should stop wondering so much. Here, it is all about context. McCain succeeded in the context of being an underdog primary challenger to an establishment candidate with the media on his side. He could deploy arguments he can't now. He's the top guy now. There's no one's eye left to poke, except Obama's, and that's conventionally partisan and not media fodder in the same way the original Straight Talk Express was.

Or look at Bush. He thoroughly owned the American political space from September 2001 to the spring of 2005. Ever since, it's owned him. Here again, Bush was highly susceptible to the political context. The long and consistent slide in his approval ratings post-9/11 suggested he was on something akin to political autopilot. It was only when he tried to exercise some control over his political destiny and define his opposition (during the 2004 campaign) that the trend reversed itself. But once Bush shifted from campaign mode into official mode, he was again subject to the laws of political gravity.

In modern history, only two politicians have been able to dramatically alter the context in which they operated: Reagan and Clinton. Reagan brought his own context -- an optimistic, can-do America to replace the dreariness of the '70s. And he was always able to bounce back from scandals or setbacks like Iran-Contra. And Clinton during impeachment was able to boomerang a personal scandal back on his opponents by making it all about the accusers, not the accused. In so doing, he was able to dodge the natural tendency of Presidents to get dragged down by voter fatigue.

Time will tell if Obama fits in the "good" or "great" category. He certainly hasn't been tested, and the media hasn't turned on him in anything more than a glancing way. But given the tendency to make stupid mistakes like "bitter" and Wright and not apologize for them, I wouldn't put him in the "walks on air" category just yet.

 The rednecks who run the party may not remember it today, but the first sign that conservatism matters did not arise in Jerry Falwell's backyard, but in California.  Thirty years ago, voters in California shocked every person in power and voted for Proposition 13,  the legendary proposition which capped property taxes and set the stage for the Reagan Revolution two years later.  That's why your friends and families in other states are jealous that no matter how ridiculously over-priced California homes are, just one mention of the property tax rules under Proposition 13 and you just left them dumbfounded as Podunk County hikes property taxes several times a year with no restriction on depreciating property.  

Thirty years later, now that Californians are essentially a dilettante population prone to swooning to every possible Left-wing fad there is, you might assume that they are itching to undo Proposition 13.  Not so, not so at all.  Proposition 13 is very popular in California according to a recent poll:  a whopping 59% thinks it's a good thing, including, hold your breath, 56% of Democrats.  The admiration towards Proposition 13 is deep.  When asked whether they want to lessen the requirement to raise taxes, 59% said no.  

It's not a mystery folks, any Republican who raises taxes is going to find themselves in the shitter. This is a warning to Schwarzenegger that raising taxes will obliterate his political career.  

Republicans in the state need to communicate how essential Proposition 13 is to the livelihood of all people in California.  Proposition 13 is key to making housing affordable, and preserving diverse communities.  The party also need to communicate that "bonds" which voters think is free money, is a stealth tax raise.  

While all America breathed a collective sigh of relief when Jimmy Carter left the White House, (looking forward with real anticipation to the Presidency of Ronald Reagan which would bring common sense and respect back to government) little did we know that the latent ticking time bomb that Carter left behind would ultimately destroy all that Reagan would build.

Of all the far-left liberal programs and policies that Carter brought into the government, the stealth bomb that has had the most damaging impact on the stability and character of the country was Carter's establishment of the National Education Agency. Little by little over the last 30 years, America's public schools have been turned from expressions of the community's concerns for their children into propagandized, federally-controlled government schools. While the populace still want to believe that their neighborhood little red school house is still the best place for their children, the facts suggest otherwise. Just consider the stories of teachers sexually abusing the kids, which started popping up yearly, then monthly and now weekly. School shootings, which used to surprise and horrify us, are now a uniquely American rite of spring. Half the freshmen in most schools do not graduate. They had no choice but to go to school when they were six, but by the time they're 16 they've grown up enough to walk out.

What do these kids who are fleeing school in unprecedented numbers know about those schools that their parents either don't know or refuse to acknowledge? The kids know that the teachers are not teaching the core elements of education: reading, writing and arithmetic. The kids know that schools are teaching Sex Ed in kindergarten - and teaching sexual techniques to grade-schoolers that their parents never heard of. The kids know that their teachers are reading magazines in chemistry classes instead of teaching chemistry. Finally, these school kids know that so-called educators are using psychology methods to change how the children think - as well as what they think - about issues; pushing a perverse morality that would horrify their parents if those parents really stopped to think things through. Teachers and "educators" are more interested in changing kids' minds away from their parents' archaic principled conservative ideas than they are in teaching these kids about the real, heroic and ultimately noble history of the United States. Public school children no longer learn about the actual words in the Constitution, instead they are told how that the old white guys who wrote the Constitution are the real reason for all our problems.

So, when Obama claims that he has gone to 57 states - with one yet to go - no one notices the gaff, or if they notice, nobody cares. Jay Leno has found a plethora of people on the street to interview week after week who cannot identify countries, leaders of nations, or know about basic United States historical events.

As America's solid-citizen conservative parents continue to send their children to Federal-pattern government schools, they don't seem to realize that they are putting their children under the influence of the socialistic ideas that are routinely and "officially" taught in those schools. After all, children are expected to respect and learn from their teachers. It's been long noted in all cultures that students will become just like their teachers.

When concerned parents volunteer at their kids' schools, they are given busy work
- or they are used as cheerleaders intent on helping the already bloated school districts to bring in even more money by sending their children door to door to sell popcorn or gift wrapping for play equipment. Oddly, that 300 million bond issue was able to build palaces for administrators and to buy "blame American first" history textbooks, but it was just not enough to buy dodge balls for the school.

All the while, the courts have issued one decision after another, building an impenetrable body of case law that increasingly rules against parents having any influence on the instructions of their children - from a distorted history of America to sex-ed classes that include "safe-sex" how-to instructions. It has gone to the point that, in one Massachusetts decision, courts have ruled that parents have no say in when the child will be taught what. In essence, parents are told - basically - to hand their child over to the schools, at the door, and trust that Big Brother Knows Best.

Thanks to Jimmy Carter, we now have government schools which have been teaching state-sponsored liberalism for about 30 years, controlling the knowledge and attitudes of America's generations under 40 years of age. Those public school graduates are the *young people* who believe what Obama has to say when spews his socialism. When Congresswoman Maxine Waters advocates nationalizing an industry, or when Clinton demands Universal Health Care, these mis-educated now-young-adults have no idea that these extreme measures are not authorized in OUR constitution, but they are enshrined as public policy in the constitution of socialist nations around the world.

The ideals of individualism, of limited government, of self reliance and self responsibility are increasingly foreign to our citizens - especially citizens under age-40 - because this Jimmy Carter stealth bomb has, in fact, exploded in every school in America.

Yet, American business which are forced to spend over $9 billion dollars a year just to educate their employees - because those employees, victimized by our bloated education system were not educated - continue to support and send money to publicly funded institutions called public schools.

Schools across American have the nation's citizens under the gun - they take our property taxes with promises of improving education - yet fail to deliver educated citizens. These public schools are not educating our children - high school graduates cannot support themselves or their future families without further training and education.

Yet in spite of the evidence of a total breakdown of the country's educational system, most people will not even consider alternative systems or alternative educational choices. Instead, they patriotically continue send their children to public schools, and their tax dollars to school administrators. After all, that's what made this country great in the past: a good education system.

Welcome to the post-Carter era - an age when public education does more harm than good.