Category: Politics

Bush Speaks Out On Katrina

Click here for reactions to the President’s speech

I’ll be liveblogging the Bush speech on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in just a few minutes. This speech is one of the more vital speeches that Bush will give. The major problems with the federal response to Hurricane Katrina have given Bush a major political black eye with the American people. Bush needs to explain clearly and simply what went wrong, why, and what will be done in the future.

Bush is in a difficult position. The liberal mainstream media wants to crucify him, and after multiple attempts to do it, the liberal media has finally found something that has a chance of sticking. However, Bush tends to do well with major addresses like that. He doesn’t have the slickness of Clinton or the oratory of Reagan, but he does have the common touch that helps him appeal to the American people in a way few politicians can.

President Bush needs to restore confidence in his leadership after the debacle of FEMAs major problems. With the massive and unabashed partisanship of the media, he knows that no matter what he’s going to get the blame for the media. He needs to show that he’s in charge, that the media’s constant attempts to turn this into a political football is counterproductive and petty, and that he is going to do as much as possible to fix the problem – even though the problems in New Orleans were a result of that city’s endemic corruption and failure to implement its own disaster plan.

Bush doesn’t need to bother with his critics. They’ve already made up their minds – he needs to reassure those who have been shaken in their support for him. That is difficult task, but Bush has an opportunity to rise above the petty partisan bickering and show the leadership that won him reelection last year.

8:02PM – The President begins. He notes the dichotomy of having such devastation here at home – Katrina was a shock to the American public, and one that will have an effect for some time.

He also talks of the courage and heroism of the rescuers – something we heard far too little of during the last few weeks of partisan acrimony.

8:05PM – President Bush pledges that we will rebuild New Orleans – I’m not quite sure if New Orleans will ever be the same, but he’s right – America without New Orleans is unimaginable.

8:07PM – Bush speaks to the refugees – telling them what to do, where to call, etc. This is good, but this is really something Bush should have done a few days ago when the problem was more immediate.

Congress has authorized more than $60 billion in aid. Great, but I’d like Bush ask Congress to tighten their belts. Every member of Congress should be asked to give up one project in their district – that $60 billion should go toward reconstruction, not pork. Sadly, Bush isn’t the type to demand fiscal discipline of Congress.

8:11PM – Bush is doing what he has to do – let people know that the government is doing its work. I like the fact that he’s stating that he’s not going to let the system be turned into a black hole for money. However, this kind of federal make-work action doesn’t necessarily result in economic stability. When the rebuilding is done, will the jobs merely go away? I’d love to see Bush announce that he will support the growth of new businesses – especially minority-owned businesses by declaring a moratorium of all taxes on small businesses in the affected area and doing whatever is necessary to spur sustainable economic growth for years to come.

8:15PM – Well, looks like he just went there. I didn’t read an advance copy of the speech, so apparently we’re in the same wavelength there. Good, this sort of thing will help not only rebuild New Orleans – but give it the chance to thrive for the future.

8:16PM – An Urban Homestead Act. Damn, that’s something I never thought of. Something about that strikes me as a particularly good and interesting idea. Home ownership helps to fight crime and grow peaceable and livable communities. I’m really liking that idea…

8:20PM – Bush is stressing the essential nature of detailed emergency planning. New Orleans utterly failed to respond to the hurricane and the flooding in an effective manner. FEMA isn’t the right agency to do first response – that is and always has been a local task. Florida’s hurricane planning is second to none – other states need to learn from their experience.

8:21PM – Bush states that the federal government needs to make a more effective response, and President Bush is personally taking responsibility for the problems – and for the solutions. The American people understand that partisan finger pointing is pointless – we need to fix the problems. Bush needs to stress that time and time again. This is something that should be above partisan acrimony, not another attempt to bring Bush down. If Bush can put himself above the fray it will help show his leadership.

8:23PM – Bush ends on a lyrical note, speaking of New Orleans funerals. A nice way of bringing this speech to a close.

Bush Speech Reaction

Bush needed to show that he’s in charge, has a plan, and is working to fix the problem. Bush did that tonight. There will inevitably be a mess of partisan attacks, but Bush simply has to put himself above the fray. There were some lyrical moments to the speech, especially in the ending. This speech wasn’t a home run, but it was a solid single.

I really like the idea of a new Homestead Act. This is an opportunity to not only rebuild the shattered city of New Orleans, but work to attack the root of the region’s endemic poverty. The idea of an urban Homestead Act is beyond brilliant – give the people an opportunity to take ownership of their communities. Ownership is one of the most powerful ways of building civil society. Rather than cramming people into projects, give them an opportunity to form a true community. This is one of those proposals that that stands a good chance of attracting people from all political spectrums. Of all the elements of this speech, that is the one that struck me the most. Bush is not only fighting the devastation of Katrina, but showing a new way of dealing with the problems of inner city poverty. Combining government works projects with a solid free-market plan to build civil society is a true example of “compassionate conservatism” – and that plan, while risky, has much promise.

Lorie Byrd reports that the reaction from the Katrina evacuees interviewed by ABC was quite positive.

(Editorial Note: I don’t see many instant reactions to this speech. So, leave your comments/trackbacks if you have any thoughts. Since everyone else is out, I’m going back to my DVD of Lost… More tomorrow…)

A Time For Sacrifice

John Fund has an excellent piece asking why the Administration and Congress aren’t cutting non-defense discretionary spending. We’re in a war and dealing with the aftermath of a major national disaster that effects millions. And what has Congress done in recent months?

Neither the White House nor Congress appears to be in any mood, for example, to revisit the highway bill’s 6,373 “earmarks,” or individual projects for members, worth $24.2 billion. Alaska’s Rep. Don Young, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has bragged that the bill is “stuffed like a turkey” with goodies for his state. It includes $721 million for Alaska, including a $2.2 million “bridge to nowhere” connecting the town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) to an airport on Gravina Island (population 50). Another bridge, in Anchorage, has a $200 million price tag and is considered such a marginal project that even the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce opposes it.

Non-defense spending has skyrocketed in recent years, growing by leaps and bounds during a time of war. The appitite for pork in Congress continues unabated, with such wasteful programs as the Medicare bill, the farm bill, and the transportation bill costing this nation billions in wasteful pork-barrel projects. These projects would be a waste in peacetime – but in a time of war they’re absolutely unconscionable. Fund notes that FDR was perfectly willing to slash spending during the Second World War – and while we’re not engaged in a conflict of that order, there’s no reason why someone in Washington can’t start demanding fiscal discipline.

It’s a sad reality of American politics that there isn’t a single party willing to hold the line on spending. The Democrats would tax and spend, which would harm the economy while expanding the deficit, and while the Republicans have the right idea on taxes, they still don’t have a clue about holding down the continual expansion of government. If anything, political power has weakened the GOP’s resolve in controlling the size and scope of government. The Medicare bill was nothing more than a massive handout – and did it make the AARP any more likely to accept the critical efforts at reforming Social Security? Certainly not.

The Bush Administration has been excellent on terror, good on taxes, but pitiful when it comes to limiting government. In a time of war, spending $2.2 million to build a bridge to nowhere is absolutely unacceptable. Dumping billions into subsidies is unacceptable. Inflating the size of government at a record pace is unacceptable.

With the effects of Hurricane Katrina requiring a massive rebuilding effort, it’s time for Bush to draw a line in the sand. No more pork. No more subsidies. No more handouts to industry. Sadly, while Bush’s determination in the war on terror is resolute, his determination to stem the tide of government encroachment is as lily-livered as they come. The American people are perfectly willing to sacrifice their time and their money to help those in need along the Gulf Coast. Why can’t government be willing to sacrifice its addiction to pork barrel spending?

The Politics Of Blame

Jeff Goldstein has an excellent piece on Hurricane Katrina and the politics of blame. The speed at which the Hurricane became yet another left-wing talking point was absolutely shameful. The fact is that the United States has not seen a natural disaster on this scale in its entire history. This may well end up being a more destructive tragedy than the Chicago Fire or the San Francisco earthquake – the city of New Orleans has been flooded right off the map. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether the city itself will even survive.

The fact is that as Goldstein notes, nobody comes off from this tragedy smelling like roses. The City of New Orleans had a contingency plan for a disaster like Katrina – and the city government of New Orleans failed to follow it. The infamous picture of the rows of flooded school-buses are a testament to the incompetence of the evacuation plans.

Gov. Blanco was also horrendous. Her indecision and incompetence cost many lives in New Orleans, and President Bush had to beg her to issue a mandatory evacuation order. In a crisis, local first responders are always the first line of defense, and thanks to the general incompetence of the City of New Orleans, valuable time was wasted. Nearly two-thirds of the New Orleans police force abandoned their posts, some joining in the looting. While Mayor Nagin was at least making some effort to fight the endemic corruption in the city, it was too little, too late.

New Orleans was a lovely city and a tourist hotspot, but it was saddled with a corrupt and inefficient system of government. The levees were each under their own separate government agency, a system designed to distribute spoils to political cronies. The New Orleans Police Department collapsed, ensuring that those brave officers who didn’t abandon their duty were utterly swamped. The total destruction of civil society at the hands of thugs, rapists, and looters should be a wake up call to community leaders in other urban centers – that sort of violence and lawlessness is absolutely unacceptable.

FEMA and the National Guard did what they could, but President Bush and Secretary Chertoff lost valuable opportunities to show leadership. After September 11, President Bush’s resolve helped steel the nation – this time he seemed unable to muster the kind of resolve he needed. Granted, years of incredible strain have worn him down, but he failed to show the kind of leadership he should have. While the President can’t really do much in this sort of situation, at least he could have given the appearance of command.

The fact is that the critics only want to snipe and jab – the only thing the permanently angered minority wants is some way to crucify Bush. However, this is more important than politics. We need to continue to provide supplies and aid to those who need it and work to recover what can be recovered from the wake of disaster. Unfortunately, the poisonous political atmosphere makes that all the more difficult to achieve.

Hurricane Katrina showed some of the worst of this country. The collapse of New Orleans into a Hobbesian state of nature was nearly unthinkable for a country that prides itself on its civil society – and yet in a major American city, civil society utterly unraveled. It’s far past the time for mealymouthed excuses and race-baiting hucksterism.

Even when New Orleans is dried out, the work will not be over. We’ve never faced a disaster of this magnitude, and rebuilding may take years. What is crucial is that steps are taken to make sure that this sort of thing never happens again, and when everyone is trying to shoehorn in their own political agendas into the process, we may well be damned to repeat history once again.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin rips into FEMA Administrator Michael Brown. FEMA’s done a mediocre job at best, and hasn’t responded to this tragedy nearly as well as they should. One of the problems is that the Department of Homeland Security, while a good idea in theory, has been allowed to morph into a bureaucratic nightmare.

Of course, Brown is getting the full support of the President. Bush should have fired George Tenet and Norman Mineta after the September 11 attacks. Brown should be politely shown the door as well – which means he’s quite probably secure in his job.

UPDATE: Idiotic moves like this don’t help. FEMA seems completely unable to get its act together, and incidents like this are absolutely appalling. This should be considered a warning – our disaster-response systems aren’t doing nearly as well as they must, and we have to start making changes now before another major disaster occurs. This kind of bureaucratic ineptitude is simply unacceptable.

Ellsworth Off The Chopping Block

John Thune is breathing easier this afternoon as the BRAC Commission has voted 8-1 to keep Ellsworth Air Force Base open. The Commission decided on the merits of the case that the costs inherent in closing Ellsworth would overshadow any cost savings of closing the base. Ellsworth is the second-largest employer in South Dakota and a major economic force in the west-river region of the state.

Thune was feeling the heat after he said that his closer ties to President Bush would help in saving the base. As it happened, President Bush didn’t seem very eager to help Thune save Ellsworth, which led Thune to threaten a vote against UN Ambassador John Bolton. (Although he did do the honorable thing and vote for closure to give Bolton a fair vote – which ended up being obstructed once again by the Democrats.) In the end, however, it appears as though Thune has been given a reprieve by the BRAC Commission.

This means that Thune can breathe a sigh of relief – being a “maverick” in the Senate is hardly a dangerous position (see Chuck Hagel, John McCain, etc…) and the voters of South Dakota will credit him for working across party lines with Senator Tim Johnson and Rep. Stephanie Herseth in saving Ellsworth. South Dakota’s Congressional delegation and Gov. Mike Rounds worked very hard in persuading the BRAC Commission that Ellsworth was important to national security and that closing the base wouldn’t produce sufficient cost savings. It appears as though their arguments were successful.

Losing Ellsworth would be a major blow to the economy of South Dakota – a state with a population of less than 800,000 people. Even though Ellsworth has survived this round of cutbacks, the B-1B Lancer program won’t be around forever. The next major hurdle the state needs to overcome is diversifying and expanding the state’s economy and improving the quality of life in the state. Saving Ellsworth is cause for celebration, but as South Dakota continue to lose population and face the challenge of transitioning from a mainly agricultural state to a more diversified economic base, the real challenges may yet be ahead.

UPDATE: As you’d expect South Dakota Politics is all over this one – Thune’s rightly stating that saving Ellsworth was a group effort, which it was. Thune knows that he’s going to get political capital from this either way, and being able to reach across party lines is something that South Dakota voters appreciate.

ADDENDUM: The Rapid City Journal has a blog covering the understandably happy reactions in Western South Dakota…

ADDENDUM: Red State has even more on Ellsworth and Thune.

With Friends Like These…

Robert Novak has a scathing piece on the way in which President Bush has completely screwed over Sen. John Thune (R-SD). It appears likely that South Dakota’s Ellsworth Air Force Base will be put on the chopping block thanks to the BRAC list, despite Senator Thune’s tireless efforts. The White House has shown absolutely no interest in helping Senator Thune despite the fact that he was their hand-picked candidate for the Senate. As Novak explains:

President Bill Clinton saved Ellsworth for then Sen. Daschle during the last BRAC process in 1995, but President George W. Bush was detached in 2005. The resulting closure demolishes Thune’s home state prestige and threatens Republican domination of western South Dakota (where Ellsworth is located) by eliminating 6,000 civilian jobs. Local political setbacks may be reversed, but damage to Thune as a national fund-raiser and candidate-recruiter seems irrevocable. He has been transformed from regular to maverick. Bush might ask himself: Is closing one air base worth this?

BRAC’s defenders say the price is not too high because no military installations could be closed if politics prevailed. Yet, to ignore Thune and consider Ellsworth the same as big-state base closings contradicts the image of a White House that puts politics first. Instead, the Bush team looked like tone-deaf, old-fashioned Republicans interested more in going by the book than winning elections.

President Bush has no problems with being a big spender, so why in the world is he leaving Senator Thune out in the cold on Ellsworth? A base closing in Connecticut is a blow to the local economy. Losing 6,000 jobs in a state like South Dakota with a population of 700,000 is a major loss. Surely there are other uses for Ellsworth if the B-1 Lancer program isn’t enough reason. However, it appears as though the people of South Dakota and Senator Thune are being left completely in the lurch.

I’ve been critical of Senator Thune’s obstructionism, although I give him credit for at least voting to give Ambassador Bolton a fair up-or-down vote in the Senate. However, the treatment he’s received from the White House has been horrendous. Senator Thune represents the future of the Republican party – he’s young, charismatic, and a great political asset to the state of South Dakota. In a state where the Republican Party has suffered the atrophy of years of political power and patronage, Senator Thune was a ray of sunshine.

Now the White House has made Thune look like a fool and failed to give him the support he needed. They asked him to run for the Senate and now they’ve pulled the rug out from underneath him. That sort of action is politically idiotic – the White House should have known better.

The White House needs to realize that leaving one of their brightest stars out in the cold is simply unacceptable. The White House should work with Senator Thune on drafting a plan to either save Ellsworth or work on finding some way of spurring economic development in western South Dakota. Building someone up only to tear them down is not the way a party builds a lasting majority. The treatment of Senator Thune at the hands of the White House has been nothing short of shameful, and it is time that President Bush shows that his support is not confined just to filling a Senate seat.

Dereliction Of Duty

I had intended to write about the Able Danger scandal last week, but held off on it due to the questions surrounding Rep. Curt Weldon’s charges. However, now it appears that the 9/11 Commission missed vital leads that indicated that the terrorist plot could have been stopped well before those 19 hijackers got on board those aircraft.

Judicial Watch has filed a FOIA request and located key documents that show that the State Department warned the Clinton Administration about allowing Osama bin Laden to escape to Afghanistan:

According to the declassified documents, bin Laden’s many passports and his private plane allow him considerable freedom to travel “with little fear of being intercepted or tracked.” Bin Laden reportedly even traveled to London where he gave a press interview subsequent to his departure from Sudan. The report also warns that bin Laden’s prolonged stay in Afghanistan “could prove more dangerous to U.S. interests in the long run than his three-year liaison with Khartoum.” One analysis document, dated July 18, 1996, asks the provocative question: “Terrorism/Usama bin Ladin: Who’s Chasing Whom.”

The documents predict that even if bin Laden were forced to keep on the move, it would prove no more than an inconvenience since, “. . . his informal and transnational network of businesses and associates remains resilient.” The report goes on to explain that bin Ladin on the move, “. . .can retain the capability to support individuals and groups who have the motive and wherewithal to attack U.S. interests almost worldwide.”

“This is not a case of hindsight being 20/20,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These documents prove the Clinton administration knew the danger Osama bin Laden posed to the United States back in 1996 and yet failed to take any meaningful action to stop him.”

As blogger TigerHawk notes, this memo disproves former terrorism czar Richard Clarke’s argument that Clinton was serious about terrorism. Throughout the 1990s, the Clinton Administration systematically failed to address the rising threat of al-Qaeda’s terrorist campaign against the United States. Former President Clinton even went as far as to say this:

“I also wish,” he continues, “I desperately wish, that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early. I don’t know if it would have prevented 9/11, but it certainly would have complicated it.”

Except that argument is ridiculous on its face. It was quite clear that al-Qaeda was responsible for the Cole attack – bin Laden himself was bragging about it. Waiting for the FBI and the CIA to official confirm al-Qaeda involvement would have taken months – which is why nothing was done. That sort of attitude is precisely why the 9/11 attacks happened – an attitude towards terrorism that treats Osama bin Laden as a Middle Eastern Tony Soprano rather than a hostile military leader is doomed to failure.

Compounding this evidence is the Able Danger information. A credible source is confirming the veracity of the Able Danger information which states that the Department of Defense had flagged several of the 9/11 hijackers in 2000, but were not allowed to share that information with the FBI for fear of breaching “the wall” between military intelligence and law enforcement created by the Clinton Administration Justice Department. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer has a long and distinguished career with the DoD and would have been in a position to know about the Able Danger information.

Federal prosecutor Mary Jo White warned the Justice Department that this artificial separation was harming our counter-terrorism efforts, but her warnings fell on deaf ears. White was involved in the prosecutions of the terrorists responsible for the first World Trade Center attacks in 1993. This was the first attack by what would later become al-Qaeda and should have been a wake-up call to inform us of the danger of Islamic extremist terrorism. Yet it would be just 8 years later that the World Trade Center would be attacked again, and this time the terrorists would be successful in destroying the Twin Towers.

The person responsible for creating “the well” was none other than 9/11 Commissioner Jaime Gorelick herself. Gorelick should have recused herself from the Commission due to her clear and obvious conflict of interest. She did not do so, and that choice continues to haunt her and the Commission.

As it stands, the Commission is now claiming that they never received the Able Danger materials despite the fact that Lt. Col. Shaffer makes it clear that they were briefed on the material. Given that the 9/11 Commission has changed its tune on Able Danger several times in the course of the last week, it’s not difficult to believe that Shaffer is correct. The 9/11 Commission initially regarded the Able Danger information as “not historically significant” when it now seems clear that Able Danger’s information could have made a vital difference in preventing the worst assault on American soil since the War of 1812.

It is becoming quite clear that the 9/11 Commission utterly failed to do its job and fully and completely investigate the lapses of intelligence that led up to the September 11 attacks. If the Commission ignored the Able Danger information, what other crucial pieces did they miss? Was the fact that Mohammad Atta’s cellphone was used in Florida enough to dismiss the Czech government’s official stance that Mohammad Atta was in Prague in April of 2001? What of information that would seem to connect the German cells of al-Qaeda that spawned Mohammad Atta with Iraqi intelligence? What was in the classified documents deliberately destroyed by former Clinton Administration National Security Advisor Sandy Berger? Berger took and destroyed documents relating to the thwarted attempt by al-Qaeda agents to attack millennium celebrations across the West Coast – and the documents that Berger illegally removed from the National Archives and destroyed contained hand-written notes that may have provided damning indictments of the Clinton Administration’s handling of counter-terrorism.

These questions all deserve serious answers, and the efforts of the career bureaucrats to sweep all of this under the rug have failed. If the Able Danger information is correct, it means that the last 5 years of history must be completely reevaluated. It means that our government utterly failed us due to an excessively legalist approach to counter-terrorism that prevented key information to reach the right policymakers.

George Satayana once wrote that those who failed to remember history are doomed to repeat it – when our history contains the death of 3,000 people in a horrific terrorist attack, we cannot fail to learn the truth about what happened before 9/11 and how to prevent another one. Yet thanks to the combination of conflict of interest and ideological blindness we’re learning that the truth has been obscured. That is unacceptable, it is time that a full, thorough, and pointed investigation occur to ensure that this country does not make the mistakes that led to the death of so many again.

The Culture Gap

Thomas Frank (author of What’s The Matter With Kansas?), Howard Dean, and other liberals keep wondering why the Democratic Party can’t gain any traction with the American electorate. In Ohio’s Second Congressional District an Iraq war vet running as a centrist against an exceptionally weak candidate who was eminently defeatable only managed to come close in a special election. While Democrats are saying that this special election is some kind of a bellwether, the reality is something different. Despite the fact that voters are unsettled with the Iraq war, and Bush’s popularity is as low as it has ever been (although still above the 40% mark), the Democrats can’t seem to make much headway.

The reason is simple – it’s the culture, stupid.

Democrats have expressed bewilderment over Republican gains among lower-income, less-educated voters, saying they are voting against their economic self-interest by supporting Republican candidates. But the new Democracy Corps study concludes that cultural issues trump economic issues by a wide margin for many of these voters — giving the GOP a significant electoral advantage.

The study is based on focus groups of rural voters in Wisconsin and Arkansas and disaffected supporters of President Bush in Colorado and Kentucky. The good news for Democrats: All the groups expressed dissatisfaction with the direction of the country and with the leadership of the president and the GOP-controlled Congress.

Then came the bad news: “As powerful as the concern over these issues is, the introduction of cultural themes — specifically gay marriage, abortion, the importance of the traditional family unit and the role of religion in public life — quickly renders them almost irrelevant in terms of electoral politics at the national level,” the study said.

Those findings aren’t terrifically surprising, at least to Republicans. The GOP has been the party of “family values” for a long time now. The fact is that not only are the Democrats seen as being wrong on values issues, the Democrats don’t seem to understand the importance of the issue at all. The way in which Democrats reflexively show outright hostility to values themselves is deeply troubling to a major portion of the American electorate. As the Democratic pollsters found:

Many of these voters still favor Democrats on economic issues. But they see the Democrats as weak on national security, and on cultural and moral issues, they view Democrats as both inconsistent and hostile to traditional values. “Most referred to Democrats as ‘liberal’ on issues of morality, but some even go so far as to label them ‘immoral,’ ‘morally bankrupt,’ or even ‘anti-religious,’ ” according to the Democracy Corps analysis.

Again, no surprise there. The Democrats do tend to be anti-religious. Most Democratic activists seem to be militant atheists. Except, of course, when it’s close to an election. Then the Democrats are perfectly happy to stress their deep and abiding Christian faith – which only makes matters worse as the Democrats have a tendency to moralize, which makes them seem all the more hypocritical. For the vast majority of Christians in America, it takes more than just wrapping oneself in the Good Book to convince values voters – not even in the Republicans get a free pass on values issues from many values voters.

The underlying problem with the Democratic Party is as much philosophical as it is structural. The Democrats equate compassion with government. Unfortunately for them, government is absolutely dispassionate – and should be so. Laws cannot be based in “compassion” because “compassion” is an arbitrary human emotion. It’s also personal. There is no such thing as compassion by proxy. The basic principles of morality isn’t that you can just pass the buck onto someone else – working in a soup kitchen is an example of passion. Demanding that someone else be forced to do so is not.

What the Democrats have forgotten is that the foundation of American society isn’t based on government. It’s based on families and communities. For the last 50 years, the liberal social agenda has undermined both. A culture of divorce, drugs, and casual sex isn’t the sort of culture that is conducive to strong families and healthy communities. What the Democrats fail to understand is that the vast majority of problems they view as economic problems are really cultural problems – the decline of the American family directly correlates with nearly every major social problem we have. Trying to fix the family through the use of economics on the federal level is like trying to perform open heart surgery with a jackhammer – it’s entirely the wrong tool for the job. Raising the minimum wage and spending more money on social programs are basically quick fixes that won’t do anything to solve the basic problem at hand. Only a culture that promotes and strengthens healthy families will.

The Democrats don’t grasp that, and where they do grasp values, it’s only in a tenuous way. Hillary Clinton’s attacks on Grand Theft Auto are designed to be a triangulated appeal to values voters, but the problem isn’t with video games, it’s with a culture of permissiveness that deems such things acceptable for young kids. Hillary’s book It Takes A Village expresses it perfectly – she takes the radical ideal that the “personal is political” to its logical end – children should be raised by the state. The problem with that is that while that ideology may have worked for ancient Sparta, in a democratic society the building blocks of a healthy society come from the bottom up, and the family is the most fundamental building block of a healthy civil society.

While the Democrats want to argue that Republican policies diminish civil society, David Brooks finds that the evidence doesn’t support such a conclusion:

he decline in family violence is part of a whole web of positive, mutually reinforcing social trends. To put it in old-fashioned terms, America is becoming more virtuous. Americans today hurt each other less than they did 13 years ago. They are more likely to resist selfish and shortsighted impulses. They are leading more responsible, more organized lives. A result is an improvement in social order across a range of behaviors.

The number of violent crimes is down. The number of abortions has been declining since the early 1990s. Teenage pregnancy is down. Younger married couples are less likely to divorce than Boomer couples were. These key cultural indicators indicate the direct correlation between moral values and societal health.

Despite the GOP’s best efforts to fracture its coalition, the Democrats simply don’t have much political traction these days. The reason why is the same reason that these key indicators of civil society have been steadily getting better:

I always thought it would be dramatic to live through a moral revival. Great leaders would emerge. There would be important books, speeches, marches and crusades. We’re in the middle of a moral revival now, and there has been very little of that. This revival has been a bottom-up, prosaic, un-self-conscious one, led by normal parents, normal neighbors and normal community activists.

That’s the key – not government, but civil society. If government was the key to social order, North Korea would be a wonderland. Totalitarian societies have no shortage of strong governments, but almost no civil society. In fact, there is a tension between civil society and government. More government does not mean more civil society – in fact by taking power away from communities, it most often means less.

The Democrats don’t grasp that key philosophical principle, which is why Frank, Dean, and the rest of the Democrats can’t understand what’s “wrong” with Kansas – or the rest of the country in which moral values remain key issues. The Democratic/liberal worldview simply can’t deliver on its promises, while the values that the GOP espouses (inconsistently applied as they are) works. Until the Democrats stop trying to use government as the solution to all problems and start doing more to foster a healthy civil society, they will continue to find themselves on the wrong side of the issues in regards to moral values.

SCOTUS Watch – Roberts Is It

Scroll down for the latest information and reactions…

In a little under two hours, all the speculation about Bush’s next judicial pick will come to an end, but for the moment speculation is running wild. Edith Clement appears to be out for the moment, and ABC is standing by their statement that she will not be the nominee. Edith Jones is another strong possibility at this point. Michael Luttig and John Roberts are also being looked at very closely. RedState is starting to lean towards Roberts at the moment.

For political nerds, this is like the Kentucky Derby… more as the night develops.

UPDATE: Word from the White House: the pick will be a “real surprise”, and the White House staffers are being told the name of the pick now. Something tells me we’ll get a heads-up shortly…

Judge John G. Roberts Jr. is Bush’s pick for the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

The Associated Press is now confirming John Roberts is the Bush pick for the Supreme Court.

Roberts is a mainstream conservative, he’s already survived the nomination process for the second most powerful Court in the country (the DC Circuit Court of Appeals), and his jurisprudence seems solid based on the cursory examination I’ve been able to do. Roberts’ nomination will be controversial – any conservative’s nomination will be, but he stands a good chance of getting through the fillibuster deal reached a few months ago.

At National Review‘s Bench Memos Blog, Jonathan Adler says that Roberts is close to the “Platonic ideal” for a SCOTUS nominee – and based on his biography that seems quite possible. I think that conservatives will be happy with this pick.

It looks like NARAL, the Alliance for Justice, Ralph Neas, and the other usual suspects are going bonkers over the Roberts pick. To borrow a quote from Mr. Burns, eeexcellent…

Bush speaks in just a few minutes. Naturally, I’ll be live-blogging it between sips of a wonderful Aussie Shiraz…

President Bush is speaking from the White House, with Roberts at his side.

Roberts looks a little uneasy with all the attention – hell, who could blame him? Bush seems quite pleased with this pick.

8:06PM CST: Bush has gone through Roberts’ impressive legal and personal credentials. Bush is putting some pressure on the Senate to proceed with a prompt and fair confirmation before the Supreme Court reconvenes in October. I have a feeling that the Democrats won’t dare fillibuster him – he’s got to many bipartisan bona fides for that, and the Gang of 14 will likely support him.

8:08PM CST: Roberts had a chance to speak – he comes across well on camera, which will help. First impressions are important, and he seems to come across as someone who has the right demeanor for a member of the Supreme Court. Roberts is a bit of a cipher, but he doesn’t seem to be a Souter – if anything he’s a solid and intelligent conservative jurist.

Bush has an excellent pick here.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds notices the same thing I did – Bush seemed to be quite happy with Roberts, and Leahy and Schumer seemed to just be going through the motions in their counterpoint speech to Bush. I have the suspicion that they do know that Roberts has the support of the Gang of 14 and cannot be easily filibustered or painted as some kind of extremist radical. Not that they won’t try to sink him, but I think that to do anything even resembling a filibuster will make The Deal null and void and risk a nuclear option – and the Democrats won’t be able to swing public opinion to their side on this issue. Roberts seems to me to be a virtual lock unless he has some particularly bad skeletons in his closet – and the chances of that happening after the vetting process seems slim. We’re not only getting a solid conservative and a sharp legal mind, but one that will sail through confirmation. Absolutely brilliant.

UPDATE: Blogs for Bush has a linkload of reactions on Roberts.

Justice Clement To The SCOTUS?

BREAKING: ABC is reporting that Clement is not Bush’s pick. More as it comes.

Erick Erickson believes that Edith Brown Clement will be Bush’s first Supreme Court nominee, replacing Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

RedState has more background on Judge Clement and her positions on the issues. She seems to be sufficiently conservative to keep the base happy, but doesn’t have the sort of record that makes it easy for the radical left to tag her with the title of “extremist” and the like. Clement appears to be exactly what a Supreme Court nominee needs to be in this hyperpoliticized age: a relatively inoffensive cipher.

Judge Clement has stated that the “right to privacy” in the Constitution is a matter of “settled law” – but only so far as the Supreme Court goes. Does that mean that she would be more or less likely to overturn Roe? The fact that her position allows for some weasel room on either side means that she stands a better chance of passing through the confirmation project than someone who’s taken a firm stand one way or the other. To both the left and the right, Roe v. Wade is a lightning rod – to the left, it might as well be their One Commandment, a document handed down from On High and to be defended with every method. To the right, Roe is an abomination, a legalized sanction of the murder of thousands of innocents.

Roe may be horrendous law that rests upon the idiotic concept of “emanations” from a “penumbra” that creates some vague “right” to privacy, but it’s nowhere near as important as either side makes it out to be. Absent Roe, abortion would almost certainly be legal in many states. Certainly a state like California isn’t going to outlaw abortion anytime soon. Roe should be discarded not because of any concern over the balance between “life” and “choice” as a set of conflicting values, but because it’s a crappy piece of jurisprudence that’s only inflamed the abortion debate.

However, the chances of the logical and federalist choice of remanding this issue to the voters of each state being acceptable to either side is roughly nil. The abortion debate has become too inflamed with both sides too entrenched for their to be much chance of a reasonable compromise. Judge Clement seems to be a relatively staunch conservative on important matters such as property rights, the Commerce Clause, and other economic issues, but no Supreme Court pick will dare touch Roe. To do so would be too politically risky and guarantee sending one side or another into apoplexy. Until there’s a decisive shift one way or another on these issues, any Supreme Court nominee will continue walking the legal tightrope on this issue.

UPDATE: A Tale Of Two Ediths?

Now there are some interesting indications that Judge Clement isn’t the nominee – that another Edith, Judge Edith H. Jones is the nominee. Is this some kind of bizarre political jujitsu or just noise on the wires? Find out tonight at 8PM Central when President Bush announces his pick to replace Justice O’Connor.

UPDATE: More on Clement

The Supreme Court Nomination Blog has done an excellent service by providing case summaries of some of Judge Clement’s prior decisions on the 5th Circuit.

My Give-A-Damn-O-Meter Is At Zero

After reviewing all the evidence about the latest developments in the case of Karl Rove, Valerie Plame, and the media, I’ve come to the following conclusion:

I just don’t care.

If I hear the lefties throw around idiotic arguments that Rove committed “treason” once more, I’ll puke. If I hear the right engage in Clintonian word parsing, I’ll also puke. Therefore, I’ve stopped caring.

Yes, what Rove likely did was a slimy political move. So what? To borrow a quote from the great Casablanca, I’m shocked, shocked that Karl Rove is a partisan. He more than likely didn’t break the law, but he did engage in an operation to discredit Wilson – then again, the fact that Wilson was a liar who was trying to use his position to sabotage national policy, I can’t really get upset about that. And while Rove did “out” a person engaged in covert activities, Plame’s activities weren’t sufficiently covert that everyone in Washington didn’t know who she was and where she really worked. A pox on both their houses.

And as for the speculation about why Judith Miller is sitting in a jail cell, no ulterior motive beyond the endless moralism of the journalistic chattering classes are required. By refusing to reveal her sources (and if it’s Rove, she already had carte blanche to spill the beans) she gets the opportunity to play the martyr for the journalistic faith. No doubt that after a few weeks of squalor, she’s in for a large book advance in which she gets to be the poster child for “journalistic integrity” and other oxymorons.

Instead, this entire sordid and stupid affair is a massive partisan circle jerk. The lefties get their chance to go after Karl Rove, the righties get to note how viciously and mindlessly partisan the left is, and the rest of the country doesn’t give a damn. God willing, this whole story will soon fade away into irrelevance like SandyBerger DocumentPants, the ANG memos, and all the other various and sundry scandals du jour as the country gets on to things that actually matter like the future of the Supreme Court, preserving Social Security, and winning the war.