May 16, 2012
The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Bottom Stories of the Day
Two Papers in One!
There Must’ve Been a Stool Pigeon
“Turkey Suspects Bird Was Israeli Agent”–headline, TimesofIsrael.com, May 15
Breaking News From 1450
“Berlin Enjoys ‘Renaissance’ ”–headline, Daily Times (Salisbury, Md.), May 15
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
May 15, 2012
The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Shortest Books Ever Written
“In Defense of the TSA”–headline, New York Post, May 13
Out on a Limb
“2012 Election a ’50-50 Proposition’ for Obama, Top Pollster Says”–headline, Chicago Tribune, May 12
That’s Where the Dough Is
“DEL CRIME: Masked gunman robs pizza”–headline, Associated Press, May 11
News of the Tautological
“Lack of Babies Could Mean the Extinction of the Japanese People”–headline, FoxNews.com, May 11
Obama’s Base Is Unhappy
“The consensus is that [Barack] Obama has not lived up to the lofty expectations that surrounded his 2008 election and Nobel Peace Prize a year later,” the Associated Press reports. But actually this is good news for Obama, since these people who are disappointed with Obama can’t vote against him. They’re foreigners.
The bad news for Obama is that he “still enjoys broad international support,” because non-Americans really dislike Republicans. We particularly enjoyed this defense of Obama:
Foreign policy expert Josef Braml, who analyzes the U.S. for the German Council on Foreign Relations, said many Germans give Obama too much of the blame because they don’t understand the limits of his powers.
“There’s a lack of understanding both of how the system of checks and balances works–or doesn’t work any longer–and a lack of understanding of how big the socio-economic problems in the United States are, which cause the gridlock,” Braml said in a telephone call from Greece, where he was on vacation.
So the problem isn’t that Obama is weak or out of touch with Americans but that he is constrained by a system of checks and balances. If only the top executive had fewer limits on his power! And we all remember how well that worked out for the Germans.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
May 14, 2012
The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Out on a Limb
“But in politics there are sometimes surprises, unanticipated changes, developments that seem obvious in retrospect but were wholly unexpected before they happened.”–Michael Barone syndicated column, May 10
Questions Nobody Is Asking
“Is Sen. Portman Secretly the Most Interesting Man in the World?”–headline, Washington Examiner website, May 10
News of the Tautological
“Obama-Romney Race Competitive in 2012 Swing States”–headline, Gallup.com, May 7
Not Just Underpants
“Al Qaeda in Yemen Has ‘Whole Outfit’ Devoted to Attacking U.S.”–headline, CNN.com, May 10
Those Lobsters Were Really Steamed
“Lobster Hostilities Lead to Boat Sinkings in Maine”–headline, Associated Press, May 11
The Check Is in the Mail
“Postal Service Loses $3.2 Billion in Jan-March”–headline, Reuters, May 10
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
May 11, 2012
The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Look Out Below!
“Tesla Sedan to Hit Showrooms in June, Earlier Than Planned”–headline, MSNBC.com, May 9
Why Obama Flipped
Last night brought an email from Barack Obama with the subject line “Marriage.” It began: “James–Today, I was asked a direct question and gave a direct answer.” What drove Obama to do something so wildly out of character?
Money, for one thing. The Washington Post reported the other day that “about one in six of Obama’s top campaign ‘bundlers’ are gay . . . making it difficult for the president to defer the matter.” Lefty Post blogger Greg Sargent added:
Some leading gay and progressive donors are so angry over President Obama’s refusal to sign an executive order barring same sex discrimination by federal contractors that they are refusing to give any more money to the pro-Obama super PAC, a top gay fundraiser’s office tells me. In some cases, I’m told, big donations are being withheld.
BuzzFeed.com adds that “many in Hollywood” have “been privately sharing” the view that “the Obama presidency has been a flop. . . . But, as if on cue, Obama may have changed the narrative Wednesday in one bold move–the kind of transformative act those in Hollywood have been waiting for.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with a politician listening to his financial supporters. Though don’t hold your breath waiting for the New York Times to denounce this as an example of the corrupting influence of political money.
One shouldn’t discount sheer moral vanity as a motivator either. Yahoo! News’s Walter Shapiro speculates that “in moral terms, it is quite possible that Obama could not personally endure further equivocation.” Late last night Obama (via his campaign account, @BarackObama) tweeted a photo of himself looking skyward, with a quote from himself: “ ’Same-sex couples should be able to get married.’–President Obama.” The text of the tweet read simply: “History.”
It is possible that Obama’s self-love amplifies the workings of the Taranto principle by making him and his advisers especially sensitive to elite liberal opinion. “In the end, people close to the president say, it wasn’t a close call,” Politico reports:
The core of their argument against Mitt Romney is that he is an untrustworthy politician with no real core of conviction. Obama’s advisers–who are acutely conscious of the media’s criticism despite their professed contempt for the news cycle–simply couldn’t afford to have the president appear like a coward on the front and editorial pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, according to senior Democrats.
You have to love both the cynicism and the self-contradiction of carefully calibrating a major change in position in order to serve the purpose of making the other guy look like a flip-flopper. But the bit about the Times and the Post rings 100% true, doesn’t it?
What does it mean for November? The president himself, in his “Good Morning America” interview, feigned nonchalance. “It’d be hard to argue that somehow this is–something that I’d be doin’ for political advantage–because frankly, you know–you know, the politics, it’s not clear how they cut.” Frankly!
Many of Obama’s supporters in the media agree with him on the substance and are simply delighted that he has finally made public that he agrees with them. Their enthusiasm provides support for Jeff Bell’s assertion that social issues constitute the left’s “irreplaceable ideological core. . . . The left keeps putting these issues into the mix, and they do it very deliberately, and I think they do it as a matter of principle.”
But this ideological fervor renders suspect their evaluations of the likely political consequences, which are remarkably blasé. “A Historic Moment, but One With Little Electoral Effect” is the headline on a Washington Post post by Jonathan Bernstein:
For those who strongly support Obama’s new position, it’s unlikely that this changes anything. Yes, some marriage-equality advocates had talked about withholding support unless the president “evolved.” But realistically, there was no way that political activists–people accustomed to the normal give-and-take of politics–were not going to appreciate the wide gulf between Obama and Mitt Romney on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. Without this statement they might have needed more careful tending, but they weren’t going to walk away from their best ever ally in the White House.
The same is true for strong opponents of Obama’s new position. It’s highly unlikely that anyone who, otherwise was fine voting for Obama despite disagreeing with him on ending “don’t ask don’t tell” and each of the other measures he has supported and in many cases has enacted, would draw the line here. Nor is it likely that anyone not already energized by Obama’s record on cultural issues will suddenly find this to be the thing that gets them off the couch.
And what of everyone else? The millions of Americans, most likely a large majority, who don’t really care very much? They’re still not going to care very much. My guess is that the conventional wisdom is correct: Anyone pushing hard on the marriage issue in either direction risks seeming out of touch with those who care a lot more about the economy or other issues.
We tend to agree with that last “guess,” but how could Bernstein fail to realize that Obama’s high-profile preening about his making “history” constitutes the kind of “pushing hard” that is politically risky?
And while it’s no doubt true that Mitt Rommey runs a risk if he sounds harsh or obsessive in his opposition to same-sex marriage, it remains the case that he is on the side of public opinion. Victory has a thousand fathers, as John F. Kennedy observed, but defeat has two mommies. Every state that has cast a ballot on the question has voted against same-sex marriage, including three socially liberal ones (California, Maine and Oregon). North Carolina, which Obama carried in 2008, did so just this week by a vote of 61% to 39%.
To be sure, same-sex marriage is less unpopular than it used to be. Legislatures in several states have enacted it without being ordered to do so by the courts, and by now there probably are a few states in which it would be approved in a plebiscite. Not among them, however, are any of what are generally considered the swing states in this year’s election, with the possible exception of New Hampshire.
National Journal’s Ron Brownstein argues that Obama’s announcement “reflects a hard-headed acknowledgment of the changing nature of the Democratic electoral coalition”:
Indeed, historians may someday view Obama’s announcement Wednesday as a milestone in the evolution of his party’s political strategy, because it shows the president and his campaign team are increasingly comfortable responding to the actual coalition that elects Democrats today–not the one that many in the party remember from their youth. . . .
Obama’s announcement might not significantly change the overall level of his 2012 support, especially in an election where economic issues will dominate. But the announcement may reflect the Obama camp’s thinking about the likely composition of his support. It shows the president, however reluctantly, formulating an agenda that implicitly acknowledges the party is unlikely to recreate the support it attracted from the white working-class and senior voters who anchored Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition. Instead, the announcement shows him reaching out to mobilize the new pillars of the Democratic electorate, particularly younger people and socially liberal white collar whites.
So Obama makes up for ceding the squares and the crackers by picking up the hipsters and the eggheads. The average age of a Democratic voter drops, while the average IQ rises. Like Spinal Tap, the president’s appeal is becoming more selective.
But there are two problems with this analysis. First, squares tend to be much more reliable about actually going to the polls than hipsters do, and there aren’t enough eggheads who aren’t already with the Democrats to make up for the lost crackers.
Second, Brownstein seems to be taking only white voters into account. The Democratic coalition depends on overwhelming support from blacks and strong support from Hispanics. Blacks and Hispanics alike are less apt than whites to support same-sex marriage. When California passed Proposition 8 in 2008, exit polls showed it had the support of 70% of blacks, 53% of Latinos and only 49% of whites. (Brownstein concedes this point in a companion piece, though his emphasis again is on the inverse correlation between age and support for same-sex marriage, which holds for minorities as well as whites.)
Obama’s support for same-sex marriage is almost certain to cut into his support among Hispanics and even blacks, leading some to vote for Romney and others to stay home. We’ll be very surprised if Obama fails to win a majority of Hispanics and the vast majority of blacks, but seemingly small changes can add up.
Example: Exit polls show that in 2004, blacks constituted 11% of the presidential electorate. In 2008 that figure rose to 13%. Blacks supported John Kerry over George W. Bush by 88% to 11% and Obama over John McCain by 95% to 4%.
That would mean Kerry got approximately 11.8 million black votes to Bush’s 1.5 million, while Obama got 16.2 million to McCain’s 0.6 million. Kerry’s margin among black voters was 10.3 million, Obama’s 15.6 million, an improvement of some 5.3 million, more than half his overall 9.5 million margin. These numbers aren’t exact, given the exit polls’ margin for error, but they do give a sense of how important a voting bloc can be, even when one party can take a large majority of its support for granted.
Mickey Kaus seems to realize that Obama’s flip isn’t likely to help him this November. He argues fancifully that the president has 2016 in mind. If Obama isn’t re-elected, Kaus speculates, “I think he’s going to run again, Grover Cleveland style.” By 2016, Kaus expects public opinion “to have shifted further in favor of this social innovation,” so that what is a risky position now will be helpful then.
It does seem to us that Obama may be looking ahead past 2012–to 2013. Remember how bitter and angry the left was last summer, when he looked like a loser–like someone who didn’t “fight”? (If not, click here.) That’s nothing compared to their bitterness after a Romney victory.
But if Obama loses after having endorsed same-sex marriage–and especially if his poll numbers experience an abrupt and permanent decline over the next few days–much of the left’s anger will be directed outward, at “homophobic” Middle America. Obama will begin his ex-presidency as a hero and a martyr. Unlike past losers like Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, he won’t have to build a single house or lose his mind to rehabilitate himself.
There’s a danger in all this, however, for the Democratic Party. The more we think about it, the more it seems to us that Keli Goff is on to something with her argument that the gay mau-mauing of Obama is a racial humiliation:
The leadership in the LGBT activism community is not exactly known for its diversity. There has long been tension and resentment between the LGBT community and communities of color. Black voters were unfairly and inaccurately blamed for the Prop 8 debacle and were also strangely blamed by some for the defeat of gay marriage in predominantly white states. (Go figure.) This displacement of blame reeked of racism and was occasionally accompanied by blatantly racist language. . . .
There have also been plenty of vocally anti-gay black activists.
But President Obama is not one of them. Yet it seems that there are members of the gay community who will simply never trust him because he is black and a Christian and therefore must be anti-gay until he does everything they ask, when they ask it, to prove that he is not. This litmus test, which I have seen applied to no other leader, smacks of subtle prejudice, and yet his critics are too busy trying to prove that he is homophobic to see it.
If the electoral repudiation of the first black president is widely understood to have resulted from his being pressured to adopt a position the vast majority of blacks find repugnant, perhaps that will be the means by which the half-century-old bond between black America and the Democratic Party is dissolved.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
May 10, 2012
The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
News of the Oxymoronic
“World’s Smallest Mammoth Discovered”–headline, FoxNews.com, May 9
Fashion Tips From the Lefty Haters
“Workers at some Chicago office towers are being encouraged to dress down to avoid being targeted by protesters during the meeting of world leaders May 20 and 21,” Crain’s Chicago Business reports:
Safety procedures in some high-rises include the recommendation that employees set aside suits, ties and anything with corporate logos.
CBRE Inc., which manages the office building at 1 E. Wacker Drive, has told tenants their employees should stay away from wearing suits, urging workers to “look like a protester,” according to an email sent by one tenant to its employees, which was obtained by Crain’s.
It’s possible that this will prove to be an overabundance of caution. Crain’s quotes one local executive as saying: “I wear a suit every day. It’s my uniform. I’ve walked through the Occupy Chicago protests and they’ve never bothered me.”
Still, it’s worth underlining the difference between left-wing protesters and right-wing ones. Though the media routinely smear the latter as potentially violent, warnings like this have never been necessary at any Tea Party rally.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
May 9, 2012
The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Anthropologist Discovers Exotic ‘Christian’ Tribe
…Tanya Luhrmann, a Stanford University anthropologist, did some field work on an exotic tribe called “evangelical Christians.” She explains their mysterious ways to the open-minded, curious readers of the New York Times.
“If you want to understand how evangelicals conceive of their political life, you need to understand how they think about God,” she explains. “I saw that when people prayed, they imagined themselves in conversation with God. They do not, of course, think that God is imaginary. . . . They imagine God as wiser and kinder than any human they know.”
Fascinating, isn’t it? Apparently some of these people live right here in America! In her fieldwork, Luhrmann reports, “I met doctors, scientists and professors at the churches.”
And they vote–but they vote differently from the way regular people–oops, make that “secular liberals”–vote: “When secular liberals vote, they think about the outcome of a political choice. . . . When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately about what kind of person they are trying to become–what humans could and should be, rather than who they are.”
Uh-oh, that could spell trouble for liberal politicians. But don’t worry, Luhrmann has figured it out: “If Democrats want to reach more evangelical voters, they should use a political language that evangelicals can hear.” And don’t worry: “The good news for secular liberals is that evangelicals are smarter and more varied than many liberals realize.”
And hey, we’ve always found that when we’re trying to persuade someone of something, it’s always helpful to say: “Wow, you’re smarter than I realized!”
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
May 8, 2012
The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Out on a Limb
‘Take My Wife. Please.’
“Reporter Covering Obama Offers Relatives to Press for Interviews”–headline, TheWeeklyStandard.com, May 4
How Will They Hold the Swords?
“Deer Fencing to be Allowed in Hopatcong”–headline, Patch.com (Hopatcong, N.J.), May 4
‘And It Turns Out Pluto Isn’t Even a Planet!’
“Man Fined for Selling Faulty Solar Systems”–headline, 9News website (Australia), May 7
It’s Always in the Last Place You Look
“Indian Airforce Loses Half Its Planes”–headline, Daily Telegraph (London), May 3
Bottom Stories of the Day
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
May 7, 2012
The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Out on a Limb
“GLOBAL: Bin Laden Said Biden ‘Totally Unprepared’ to Be President”–headline, Daily Times (Salisbury, Md.), May 3
News of the Tautological
“Pro-Obama Mormons Unswayed by Shared Faith With Romney”–headline, RealClearPolitics.com, May 4
Your Tax Dollars at Work
“Rep. Ron Paul–barely a presence on Capitol Hill these days–is taking time off from his still-ongoing campaign to return to Washington for one of his pet causes: bashing the Federal Reserve,” Politico reports: An advisory from the House Financial Services Committee says Paul will host a Tuesday subcommittee hearing on legislation to “either reform or abolish the Federal Reserve System.”
So let’s see if we have this straight: Despite being “barely a presence on Capitol Hill these days” because he’s off looking for another job, Paul is still drawing a full salary (of $174,000). Nice work if you can get it.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
May 4, 2012
The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
The Lonely Life of Julia
…Julia’s story is told in an interactive feature titled “The Life of Julia” on the Obama campaign website. Julia, who has no face, is depicted at various ages from 3 through 67, enjoying the benefits of various Obama-backed welfare-state programs.
As a toddler, she’s in a head-start program. Skip ahead to 17, and she’s enrolled at a Race to the Top high school. Her 20s are very active: She gets surgery and free birth control through ObamaCare regulations, files a lawsuit under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and pays off her student loans at a low interest rate. We get updates at age 31, 37 and 42–and then the narrative skips ahead 23 years when she enrolls in Medicare. Two years later, she’s on Social Security, at which point she can die at any time.
In a column amusingly titled “Who the Hell Is ‘Julia’ and Why Am I Paying for Her Whole Life?” David Harsanyi raises an obvious objection to the story: “What we are left with is a celebration of a how a woman can live her entire life by leaning on government intervention, dependency and other people’s money rather than her own initiative or hard work. It is, I’d say, implicitly un-American, in the sense that it celebrates a mindset we have–outwardly, at least–shunned.”
This may explain why, in the campaign’s telling, nothing happens to Julia between 42 and 65. That period includes the typical peak earning years–the time at which, assuming Julia is gainfully employed, she will be paying the biggest price for “Obama’s” generosity.
At 31, the story tells us, “Julia decides to have a child. Throughout her pregnancy, she benefits from maternal checkups, prenatal care, and free screenings under health care reform.” In due course she bears a son named Zachary, the only other character in the tale.
Harsanyi is right. Obama is setting forward a vision contrary to the American tradition of self-sufficiency–a welfare state that runs from cradle to grave. And it’s a dishonest vision, because it presents all of these benefits as “free,” never acknowledging that they are paid for through coercive taxation.
Not to mention unsustainable levels of debt: Commentary’s Alana Goodman charts the life of a now 3-year-old “Julia” and compares it with debt projections at various stages of her life: “Julie [sic] hits a milestone around 2084, when publicly held debt will be just about 200 percent of [gross domestic product]–and rising.”
The most shocking bit of the Obama story is that Julia apparently never marries. She simply “decides” to have a baby, and Obama uses other people’s money to help her take care of it. Julia doesn’t appear to be poor; at various points the story refers to her glamorous career as a Web designer, and it makes no mention of her benefiting from poverty programs like Medicaid or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
In 1999 Lionel Tiger coined the word “bureaugamy” to refer to the relationship between officially impoverished mothers of illegitimate children and the government. “The Life of Julia” is an insidious attack on the institution of the family, an endorsement of bureaugamy even for middle-class women.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
May 3, 2012
The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Bottom Story of the Day
“Waitress Left Two Pennies and a ‘My Two Cents’ Note by a Customer”–headline, FoxNews.com, May 2
If He Can Do It, So Can You
“[Dan] Rather: People With Political Agendas Can Ruin Reputations on Internet”–headline, RealClearPolitics.com, May 2
Toga! Toga!
“New Greek Parties Thrive Online”–headline, Associated Press, May 1
Two Papers in One!
He Waved Goodbye Saying ‘Don’t You Cry / I’ll Be Back Again Someday’
“MID-SHORE: Man Arrested as Frosty the Snowman Charged Again”–headline, Daily Times (Salisbury, Md.), May 2
Questions Nobody Is Asking
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
