Jay Reding.com

Peggy Noonan has, perhaps surprisingly, some positive things to say about former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new “tell-all” book. As much as it would be valuable to have more inside looks at what happened in the run-up to the war in Iraq, McClellan’s book is tainted right from the start.

The Wall Street Journal connects the dots and finds that McClellan’s book was funded and published by the usual radical left-wing groups. That alone isn’t fatal, but the way in which this book is being fawned over reeks of an organized media strategy—the sort of thing which suggest that the real purpose of this book is not to tell the truth, but to advance an agenda. Even Noonan admits that the book is vapid and makes the same unsubstantiated allegations that we have all heard before.

Compare that reaction to the refusal of the mainstream media to even acknowledge Douglas Feith’s book on the start of the war in Iraq. Feith was a central player in that conflict, where McClellan was not. Feith has backed up his memories with actual documentation, while McClellan’s book has not.

The reason for the disparate treatment is obvious: McClellan is telling the media exactly what they want to hear; Feith’s narratives go against the media’s prejudices on Iraq.

It would be valuable to get to the truth about what really went on during the months before the invasion of Iraq, but expecting the truth from an author who is being swept up in such a self-serving media frenzy is too much to ask.

Dr. Tom Coburn has a diagnosis for the Republican Party, and their political future looks to be in critical condition. Why?

Unfortunately, too many in our party are not yet ready to return to the path of limited government. Instead, we are being told our message must be deficient because, after all, we should be winning in certain areas just by being Republicans. Yet being a Republican isn’t good enough anymore. Voters are tired of buying a GOP package and finding a big-government liberal agenda inside. What we need is not new advertising, but truth in advertising.

Becoming Republicans again will require us to come to grips with what has ailed our party – namely, the triumph of big-government Republicanism and failed experiments like the K Street Project and “compassionate conservatism.” If the goal of the K Street Project was to earmark and fund raise our way to a filibuster-proof “governing” majority, the goal of “compassionate conservatism” was to spend our way to a governing majority.

The fruit of these efforts is not the hoped-for Republican governing majority, but the real prospect of a filibuster-proof Democrat majority in 2009. While the K Street Project decimated our brand as the party of reform and limited government, compassionate conservatism convinced the American people to elect the party that was truly skilled at activist government: the Democrats.

He’s right. The GOP got too comfortable with power and lost their way. Instead of standing on principle, it became all about a quest for political power. So far the first instinct of the GOP remains to attack “liberal values” rather than uphold an agenda. While there is much to about the values of the Democratic Party that is worthy of attack, that will do nothing to get the Republicans out of their hole. There has to be a real agenda that the Republican Party stands behind from top to bottom. Just hitting the Democrats will not cut it.

The Senator from Oklahoma has the right diagnosis for the political ills of the Republican Party. There’s no agenda, and without something to lead people towards, you’re not really leading. The GOP is making the mistake of thinking that they can run based solely on a brand that is as tarnished as it ever has been. Instead, the GOP must run a campaign based on a sincere promise to reduce the size but increase the efficiency of government. That requires a sincere effort to fight pork and waste. The Republicans have not embraced a reform agenda, and it is killing them.

The GOP must rediscover its own first principles: what is needed is not a Reagan, but a party of Reagans. The problem is that so far the GOP is not such a party.

Sen. Joe Biden (in an response to Sen. Lieberman’s must-read piece on Democrats and the war) writes on his critique of America’s post-9/11 foreign policy. His arguments are reasonable, but the problem is that the world he describes has little to do with the world in which we all actually live. For example:

At the heart of this failure is an obsession with the “war on terrorism” that ignores larger forces shaping the world: the emergence of China, India, Russia and Europe; the spread of lethal weapons and dangerous diseases; uncertain supplies of energy, food and water; the persistence of poverty; ethnic animosities and state failures; a rapidly warming planet; the challenge to nation states from above and below.

Instead, Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster that dictates every move we make.

The problem with Biden’s analysis is that all those problems are being dealt with: the Bush Administration has been the most progressive administration in this century in terms of Africa policy. We were the first on the scene for the Indonesian tsunami. We’ve been in the lead on trying to get aid into Burma. The list could go on.

What Biden is trying to do is downplay the reality that terrorism is the central problem we face. Terrorism is one of the factors making our energy supply uncertain, it perpetuates poverty in places like Iraq, and it feeds of failed states. That doesn’t mean that terrorism is the sole problem, but it is the most significant, and a focus on terrorism is by necessity a focus on doing things like preventing failed states.

Al-Qaeda wasn’t turned into a monster by President Bush. They launched the first significant attack on continental America since 1812. They massively destabilized our economy and our way of life. And they would just love to do so again. The confluence of terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction is the greatest foreign policy threat we face—not the phantom menace of “a rapidly warming planet.”

And what would Sen. Biden do? The same policies that failed the Carter Administration:

Last week, John McCain was very clear. He ruled out talking to Iran. He said that Barack Obama was “naïve and inexperienced” for advocating engagement; “What is it he wants to talk about?” he asked.

Well, for a start, Iran’s nuclear program, its support for Shiite militias in Iraq, and its patronage of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

And exactly what leverage to we have to get Iran to change, Senator? Exactly what would talking achieve. Does anyone believe that Ahmadinejad or Khameini is going to agree to a deal in which Iran stops developing nuclear weapons? Are they going to stop spreading their influence because we ask nice?

That is the central, failed conceit of current Democratic foreign policy: it is hopelessly naïve. The Iranians cannot be negotiated out of supporting Hamas and Hizb’Allah. Why should they stop, unless we have a credible threat of force to back us up. Should a President Obama go to Tehran, does anyone really think that the mullahs would give a damn about what he said? They would have no reason to—they know damned well that he would never use force against them, so why would they bother to hold themselves to their own promises?

We tried this approach with North Korea. It didn’t work there, it’s still not working, and it won’t work with Tehran. At best, talking delays the inevitable. Teddy Roosevelt said we should talk softly and carry a big stick. The Democrats want us to go into Tehran, but they also want us to put away the stick.

Beyond bluster, how would Mr. McCain actually deal with these dangers? You either talk, you maintain the status quo, or you go to war. If Mr. McCain has ruled out talking, we’re stuck with an ineffectual policy or military strikes that could quickly spiral out of control.

Except talking doesn’t work. We may not have any choice but to go to war, but we’re not at that point yet. Sen. Biden misses another option: making the costs involved in challenging us too high to countenance.

We need a Machiavellian foreign policy, and the Democrats want us to act like Barney the Dinosaur and pretend that we’re all friends. You want to make Tehran not develop nuclear weapons? You make sure that the costs of doing so are high. We defeated the Soviet Union not through talks, but by making it very clear to the Soviets that if talking failed, we were perfectly willing to wipe them off the face of the globe.

Biden’s arguments on Iran don’t get any better:

It also requires a much more sophisticated understanding than Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain seem to possess that by publicly engaging Iran – including through direct talks – we can exploit cracks within the ruling elite, and between Iran’s rulers and its people, who are struggling economically and stifled politically.

Iran’s people need to know that their government, not the U.S., is choosing confrontation over cooperation. Our allies and partners need to know that the U.S. will go the extra diplomatic mile – if we do, they are much more likely to stand with us if diplomacy fails and force proves necessary.

The Bush-McCain saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It achieves nothing. But it forces Iranians who despise the regime to rally behind their leaders. And it spurs instability in the Middle East, which adds to the price of oil, with the proceeds going right from American wallets into Tehran’s pockets.

What is the alternative? It’s clear that talking is not going to help. The world community is not going to turn against Iran. Russia will not. China will not. Even Europe would balk.

A foreign policy based on meaningless words back with no credible threat of force is a foreign policy damned to fail—just as it did when Jimmy Carter did it. Under his watch, the Iranian regime was founded. We cannot afford such a disaster again.

We have to deal with Iran, but pretending that talk will solve anything is futile. Iran, like the rest of the Middle East, respects strength and laughs at the weak. The Democrats continue to advocate for a foreign policy of weakness in which a servile United States goes to our enemies and begs them to play nice.

Americans don’t beg, we lead from strength. That is how Reagan led this country to the end of the Cold War and how a President McCain will help lead this country to an end to the War on Islamic Terrorism.

The Washington Post has an article on how high oil prices are “stumping” the experts. The massive rise in oil prices to $130+/barrel does represent an unprecedented rise in oil costs. However, it shouldn’t be a surprise. The world is facing a “perfect storm” of factors: China and the rest of Asia are still growing, OPEC is either unwilling or unable to pump more (and the good money is on the latter—the Saudis may have been overstating their own reserved for some time), and countries are subsidizing gas prices—and subsidies invariably distort markets and raise prices.

Of course, the Democrats have their own culprits. Of course, the Democrats are wrong. They blame the oil companies for raising prices. They do look suspicious, given their skyrocketing profits. The problems with that theory is that those profits are not out of line for the amount of oil they sell. The other problem is that they can’t invest in new projects. Normally they would reinvest those profits into expanding their new capacity. But bad public policy prevents them from doing that: most of America’s coastal waters are off-limits to new oil development, and domestic development in places like ANWR are also forbidden.

Congress is once again asking for the impossible, and behaving petulantly when they don’t hear what they want. On one hand, they want the U.S. to limit carbon emissions—but then they demand cheap gas.

The world doesn’t work that way. We’re running out of cheap gas, and it’s a question of whether we hit the peak in 2030, 2050, or some other point. If we want cheap gas, we have to drill in places like ANWR and off-shore, and we’d better accept that we’ll produce more carbon emissions. If we want to keep ANWR into the untouched pestilential wasteland that it is and keep carbon emissions down, then consumers better get ready to have an arm and a leg ready the next time they buy gas for their cars or pay their heating bills.

As always, Congress’ economic illiteracy is hurting American interests. The laws of supply and demand are just that—laws. There is a relatively stagnant supply of oil and more people are using it. That means the costs will go up, and they’ll go up not only to cover the current costs of oil, but also the future costs.

If the goal really is to reduce the price of oil, we can’t sit on our own reserves. A smart public policy would be to open ANWR and offshore sites to development instead of relying on dangerous and unstable places like the Middle East or Venezuela for our oil while simultaneously creating tax credits and awards for developing clean fuel technologies—because sooner or later we will enter a post-oil economy and the longer we can cushion the shocks the better positioned we’ll be.

Our current strategy, however, won’t work. We can’t keep messing around with the market through oil taxes, byzantine requirements for the blending of fuels, and a stubborn insistence on not allowing more infrastructure like refineries.

As they say, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. The problem is that lesson most of us learned in first grade seems to be forgotten the second a politician walks into the halls of Congress.

As Obama claims the Democratic nomination (despite Hillary Clinton—like Al Gore —having won the popular vote), he just continues to make rookie mistakes. Mitch Berg notes another example of Obama saying something sure to hurt him in the general election. Obama made the following statement in regard to global warming:

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.

“Yes we can!” has now morphed into “that’s not going to happen.” So much for Obama’s positive message of “hope.” Apparently we can hope that Obama is merciful in dictating what we should drive, eat, and what temperature we can set our thermostats to.

Such a message is not going to win Obama any converts. Contrary to his defeatism, we can have a modern economy, a growing economy, and a quality standard of life without sacrificing the environment. It simply requires us to be proactive, creative, and not give into the Malthusian rhetoric of those who would set us back.

Berg compares Obama’s words to Jimmy Carter’s infamous “malaise” speech, and it’s an apt comparison. It displays a worldview that is in direct contradiction to Obama’s supposedly “hopeful” rhetoric. Instead of “hope” and “change” Obama’s true worldview seems to be that America must make itself low to be popular with others. That isn’t hope, that’s pessimism. That isn’t change, but a throwback the eras of Jimmy Carter’s fecklessness.

We need a 21st Century energy policy and a 21st Century farm policy. Sen. Obama would take us into the past with more barriers, taxes, subsidies and set-asides. A truly hopeful candidate would talk about the enormous potential of the years ahead—an age when our energy comes from nuclear, solar, wind, and other clean technologies. An age in which our cars are powered by cellulosic ethanol, biofuels, hydrogen or electricity produced by clean power. Obama is simply wrong: we can drive the cars we want, eat as well as we want, and set our thermostats to whatever we damn well please. The way we can do that is by advancing the state of technology and growing the economy. Slowing growth and rejecting new technologies is not the way forward. That should be real change we can believe in.