The President's New Clothes

I don't have a lot of patience for the "birthers," those con men of conspiracy spreading the unsubstantiated rumor that President Obama was born outside of the U.S. and therefore fails one of the Constitutional requirements to hold the presidency. On January 20, 2009 that ship sailed. End of story. I don't much care where he was born; he's our president now and let's move on.

On the other hand, I am intrigued about the lack of information about the President's scholastic achievements. During his meteoric rise to power we heard a lot about how brilliant he is. Stands to reason if he is so brilliant, he'd want to show off everything from his 5th grade runner up green ribbon in the spelling bee to a magna cum laude diploma, if he has one. But the door to his academic accomplishments is shut tighter than the door to the Oval Office when the Petroleum Institute comes calling.

So it was interesting to read today in the Wall Street Journal the observations of Richard Epstein. Mr. Epstein is a law professor at the University of Chicago. In the interest of full disclosure I hold a graduate degree from that university, although not granted by the law school. I knew neither Prof. Epstein nor Pres. Obama when he was an adjunct professor there.

Professor Epstein made his comments to Reason TV. Reason TV is a video service of a website called reason.com. Reason.com is a somewhat libertarian-leaning website. Prof. Epstein's observations are remarkable only because it's taken six years for someone to make them. He was speaking about the economy and comparing the differing approaches of Presidents George Bush and Obama. He noted that neither president could be called a "strong believer in laissez-faire principles."

However, speaking about Pres. Obama's tendency to try and muscle up for a home run, when a single might do, he had this to say: "The difference between [Presidents Bush and Obama], which is why Obama is the more dangerous man ultimately, is he has very little by way of a skill set to understand the complex problems he wants to address, but he has this unbounded confidence in himself." [emphasis added]

This is a former colleague of the President saying that 1) Barack Obama is more dangerous than George Bush; and 2) he (the President) isn't smart enough to understand the problems he's trying to solve. Remarkable. To my liberal friends, for whom no one was more dangerous than George W. Bush, nor stupider, it must come as a shock that a fellow law professor would essentially say that the current President doesn't have the chops to deal with the issues at hand. And furthermore, the fact that the Pres. thinks he does is an exercise in political hubris that poses a danger to the country.

Speaking personally, I never met more smart people in one place than at the University of Chicago. You'd think some of that intellectual karma would have rubbed off on the President (It didn't on me, but that's a post for another day). According to Prof. Epstein, apparently not.

He goes on to say in the interview that Prof. Obama was aloof from the other faculty members, and didn't much care for the intellectual give and take that goes on among faculty colleagues. Barack Obama apparently was so busy with what Prof. Epstein calls "collateral adventures" that he pretty much "kept to himself."

So maybe the future President was a shy, retiring academic, who kept kept his head down and minded his own business. Like the village librarian. What's wrong with that? Well, as Reason quotes Prof. Epstein: "The problem when you keep to yourself is you don't get to hear strong ideas articulated by people who disagree with you." [emphasis added] So if you're a professor who becomes President, maybe that's why you go two years without a business person of consequence in your cabinet, while at the same time racking up a reputation as the most business unfriendly president since FDR.

I don't know if the President was an A student or a D student. I suppose someday we'll find out. But I think it's interesting that his alleged brilliance seems to be called into question by a former colleague who in effect says the President isn't up to dealing with the complex tasks he faces, that his booming self-confidence in the absence of the required leadership skills poses a danger to the country, and that his personality apparently is to avoid listening to strong people who disagree with him.

Most conservatives, I think, have always felt this way about the President. But to hear a former colleague say the Emperor has no clothes, when his courtiers and he himself would have us believe otherwise is truly breathtaking.

Just thought you might like to know.

The Right Side of History

As of this posting, the situation in Egypt remains unsettled. We had fairly good intel via social networks like Twitter until the Egyptian security troops turned of Internet access, phone service and essentially tried to plunge the country in to an information black hole.

It certainly seems unlikely that Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak can survive an  uprising that includes Islamists, students and now middle class Egyptians. It's one thing for college kids to burn a tire now and again, or for professional grievers and nihilists like al Qaeda to seize an opportunity. But when you get sideways with the people who actually do the work, pay the taxes and contribute to a country's production, you're pretty much of a short-timer.

Here's the ironic thing. Almost 30 years ago I did a radio interview with a guy named Dan Meyer. Meyer was an Israeli. He happened to be the former press secretary to Menachem Begin, a Nobel laureate who became prime minister of Israel in 1977. As PM Begin was responsible for negotiating the Camp Dave Peace Accords in 1978. His opposite number who shared the Nobel prize with him for bringing peace to the Middle East was Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

What made the interview important was the date: early October 1981. It followed by a few days, the assassination of Sadat on October 6 of that year. So, ever the master of the obvious, I asked Meyer if the treaty could endure without Sadat. His answer was pretty predictable (yes), but his reasoning was actually newsworthy.

Meyer explained that he was present for most of the negotiations with the exception of those long, Kumbaya walks between the two leaders. And then he said that Sadat played a relatively minor role in the negotiations. Sadat was the strategist,  he explained. A big picture guy, but certainly not a detailed one. The nuts and bolts of the treaty fell to Sadat's chief tactician-a beefy air force officer named Hosni Mubarak, according to Meyer. Sadat may have made the peace, but Mubarak made the treaty.

Greased by $28 billion in U.S. aid to Egypt over the last three decades, the treaty has proven to be surprisingly enduring. So has Hosni Mubarak.

As we learned in school power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. President Mubarak was a bright guy and a brilliant tactician. It was he who rebuilt the Egyptian Air Force after its humiliation at the hands of the Israelis in the 1967 Six Day War. It was Mubarak who engineered the air war against Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and damned near helped defeat the Israelis for the first time.

But President Mubarak joined a long line of Middle East caudillos, that has included the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, the House of Saud and an endless parade despots and tyrants in that region.  Thirty years of oppression and kleptocracy is a long time.

The question tonight for the U.S. is whether it throws a long-time ally, Mubarak, under the tanks and provides at least verbal support for the uprising, or whether it stands by Mubarak. Whether the U.S. will be on the right side of history or not.

Three nights ago President Obama stood before a joint session of Congress and challenged Americans to create a new economy, calling it our "Sputnik moment." Well, for President Obama this is his Jimmy Carter moment. Does he support a long-time, strategic, but despotic ally as President Carter did with the Shah of Iran? Or will he support the spread of democracy-something he castigated his predecessor for doing?

Guess correctly and he gets the first real foreign policy victory of his presidency. Guess wrong and he's Jimmy Carter II.

The president's problem is that he has to outguess a master tactician in Hosni Mubarak.

Just thought you might like to know.

A Unique American Hero

He was one of a rare breed—a native, lifelong Californian. He was a prodigious author and celebrity known around the world. As a kid he was a junk food addict and prone to violent outbursts targeted at himself as well as others. "A miserable, goddam kid" was how he described himself.

When he was a teenager he happened to hear a talk on healthy lifestyles. It would become a seminal moment in his life. He picked up a copy of Gray's Anatomy and started reading. His goal was to live better and live longer. He swore off the junk food and started exercising. He felt better about himself. He finished high school and studied to be a chiropractor.

In the 1930s, after receiving his chiropractic license he opened a gym in Oakland, Ca. and began preaching what was up till that time the unheard gospel of weight training. It was he who designed the device that would become known as the "Smith machine." The Smith was device that held a barbell in a fixed position, allowing only vertical movement and isolating the muscles used to raise and lower the bar. Today it is a staple of any gym worthy of the name.

Some 50 years after he opened that first gym and 200 gyms later, he sold his operation to Bally's, which renamed them Bally Total Fitness.

His accomplishments were stuff of Superman. At age 40 he swam the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. Underwater. Three years later he swam it above the surface, but towing a cabin cruiser. Twenty years later he did it again, this time underwater, handcuffed and towing another boat. At the age of 70 he towed 70 boats, one for each year, while swimming across Long Beach Harbor—a distance of one mile. He was shackled and handcuffed at the time.

Maybe his most enduring accomplishment was teaching a generation of women that lifting weights was OK for them. That it was more that OK—it would help them look and feel better about themselves. In doing so he explodedthe popular myth that weight-lifting women would end up looking like mustached wrestlers. He did this on the down low—meeting with them every morning over the television airwaves. He had the rare gift that most broadcasters can only hope for: He engaged each member of his audience and made them believe they were having a one-on-one conversation. For nearly 35 years his fitness television show provided an outlet for stay-at-home moms (most of the moms at the time) to exercise daily in the privacy of their own homes. Most of the husbands never knew.

Today their daughters and granddaughters can be found by the millions in health clubs, gyms, bike and road races and dance and yoga classes across the U.S. He taught them it was OK to sweat and that looking and feeling good about themselves was a good thing.

The California kid who gave up junk food and decided he wanted to live a good and long life died yesterday. He was 96. His name was Jack LaLanne and he's left an indelible mark on America.

Just thought you might like to know.

Blood Libel

So the comity that followed last Saturday’s tragic shooting in Tucson lasted about…15 minutes. After Pima County sheriff Clarence Dupnik’s rash comments following the shooting, and after Princeton professor and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman’s blog in the New York Times (that proved conclusively that 1) an Ivy League education isn’t work a damn; 2) the Nobel Prize has been reduced to the same value as the runner-up green ribbon in a 5th grade spelling bee; and 3) The Times has lost all authority as a news source), conservative pundits fired back. Then came Sarah Palin.

Mrs. Palin posted a video statement about the shootings on her website. This was entirely appropriate because she had been singled out by some on the left as creating a “climate” of hate that allegedly motivated the shooter. Mrs. Palin’s mistake, which has supplied a full 24-hour news cycle for MSNBC (maybe in their case, an “opinion” cycle) was saying that the rantings on the left amounted to “blood libel” because they falsely implied that she and other conservative pundits were responsible for the bloodshed.

Mrs. Palin’s point was that by screaming that talk radio and Fox News had in some way inspired alleged shooter Jared Loughner liberals had libeled her and other conservative yakkers and commentators. Furthermore, she implied that liberals were taking advantage of the loss of life in order to demonize conservatives. In general, Mrs. Palin’s statement struck a kumbaya note.

But the term “blood libel” is a specific term in history that referred to Christian false claims in medieval times that Jews had engaged in the ritual use of Christians’ blood—often as an excuse to begin a pogrom. So the backlash from the left has been nothing but furious. Had it been someone else, the reaction from the left might have been less. But Mrs. Palin has long been an anathema for the left—a bright, articulate, attractive, pro-life, gun-toting feminist. And to use a popular political metaphor, their prime target on the right.

So rather than join Mrs. Palin in a brief truce, many on the left have chosen to continue the back and forth war of words. This is unfortunate.

Should Mrs. Palin have used a term different than blood libel? Yes. Should whoever wrote her speech have researched the historical context of “blood libel” before using it? Yes. But is this about an insensitive use of a culturally charged term? No. It’s about using Tucson as a way to further discredit Mrs. Palin.

Personally, I like Mrs. Palin. I don’t know if she’s presidential timber, nor do I know if I’d vote for her for president. But I can think of at least five recent presidents that I could say that about. And it won’t be a bunch of bloggers like me, or pundits like Mr. Krugman who will decide whether she’s got the chops to sit in the Oval Office. The American electorate will.

I’m not about to get into a he said/she said debate over who behaved more badly first. If you want to read a compendium of recent Democrat inflammatory bile about Republicans I refer you to James Taranto’s recent Wall Street Journal column.

But it’s time somebody plays the role of the adult in this political war. Time somebody refuses to cross the line. The fact that the country is so polarized isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Because ultimately we respect our institutions. You need only to have seen Nancy Pelosi symbolically hand over the reins of power in the House of Representatives to a humble John Boehner last week to know that neither side has a monopoly on good citizenship or fair play. But when we tolerate one or the other side crossing the line by pimping a tragedy then we’ve all started the slow descent into hell.

Just thought you might like to know.

Huckleberry Finn

Last year we blogged several times about how political correctness had overtaken common sense in the classroom. How book publishers were changing references in historic novels to accommodate the perceived sensibilities of readers who were purportedly offended.

Now comes word that Auburn University Professor Alan Gribben has produced  versions of Mark Twain's literary masterpieces Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer--without the words nigger or injun.

Professor Gribben says he was uncomfortable saying those words when he was teaching the book. Aw. I'm sorry the good professor was uncomfortable. But guess what? When you're teaching there are things that will make you uncomfortable. It goes with the job. If you teach The Diary of Anne Frank are you going to pretend that the Nazis were Harley owners and only wanted to take Anne and her family to the annual Sturgis Rally in South Dakota? If you teach your kids about sex are you going to say that daddy gives mommy a candy bar and a baby grows in her stomach?

Who would dare re-write this guy?

Teaching is tough work. Trust me, I used to do it. It takes a tough person to overcome that discomfort and give a student, a child, a player or anyone else a lesson that will last a lifetime. Huckleberry Finn was the first real book I had ever read. I was 16. It changed my life and made me a lifetime reader and writer. Because for the first time I learned that words had meanings and consequences. If a teacher hides a word from a student, it has no meaning for that student. And if it has no meaning, there are no consequences to using it.

Perhaps Prof. Gribben doesn't have what it takes to stand up in a classroom. Maybe he and his mates ought to find another line of work.

Just thought you might like to know.

Senator Mike O'Pake

Pennsylvania State Senator Mike O'Pake died this week from complications due to a recent bypass surgery. He was 70. Sen. O'Pake is remembered as having been the longest serving member in the 328-year history of the Pennsylvania General Assembly.


But among his many accomplishments Sen. O'Pake may best be remembered for his championing of the use electronic benefits transfer, or EBT, technology to replace food stamp coupons back in the 1980s. Fraud and abuse in the Food Stamp Program had been rampant, with food stamps being bought and sold in many neighborhoods like a new coin of the realm. In 1984 the Agriculture Department, which oversees the program, launched an experimental two-year pilot to test whether it could replace food stamps with a debit card, similar to a bank card. The pilot site happened to be Sen. O’Pake’s 11th Senatorial District of Berks County.

Federal Food Stamp Coupons

By 2004 all states had switched to EBT

When the two-year pilot was completed in 1985, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania prepared to return the district to the issuance of food stamps. But the electronic EBT cards proved so popular, that program participants beseeched Sen. O’Pake to find a way to continue the electronic program. They appreciated the fact that they no longer had to shop with a currency that immediately identified them as poor. They also liked the convenience that EBT provided.

Retailers liked the fact that EBT was like any other form of electronic payment, and they no longer had to bear the cost for the care and keeping of food stamps.

Government liked the fact that they no longer had to pay $40 million a year to print food stamps, which were used one time and destroyed. Everyone except the bad guys who bought and sold food stamps as if they were stocks and bonds liked the idea that money that had been appropriated by Congress for a food supplement program was ending up on the tables of families and children.

Mike O’Pake was nothing if not resourceful. Although the pilot had been funded by the federal government, he found funds so that the Commonwealth could continue paying the administrative cost of the EBT program. In fact, with state funding, the Reading EBT pilot ran for more than ten more years, until Pennsylvania replaced it with a statewide EBT system in 1997.

Mike O'Pake, godfather of EBT

To call Mike O’Pake the “godfather” of EBT would not be too much of a stretch. The presence of the Reading EBT pilot provided a model for other states to adopt the technology for their food stamp programs. By 1996 Congress had mandated that all states must adopt EBT technology. By 2004 all 50 states, the territories and the District of Columbia had adopted EBT technology in place of food stamps. The Agriculture Department even re-branded the Food Stamp Program as the SNAP Program.

More importantly, states began to experiment with ways to bring the cost-efficiency, convenience and security of EBT to other government entitlement programs. Today states use EBT technologies to issue food benefits, to provide prescriptive supplemental nutrition to pregnant and nursing mothers, to authorize medical care, to issue child support payments, and to provide child care subsidies. None of this would have happened at the speed it did or in the way it did without the decade-long Reading EBT pilot to provide assurances that it could work.

And Reading would not have happened if it weren’t for Mike O’Pake.

Just thought you might like to know.