Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, February 3, 2012

At his National Prayer Breakfast address yesterday, President Obama declared, “Now, we can earnestly seek to see these values lived out in our politics and our policies, and we can earnestly disagree on the best way to achieve these values. In the words of C.S. Lewis, ‘Christianity has not, and does not profess to have a detailed political program. It is meant for all men at all times, and the particular program which suited one place or time would not suit another.’ Our goal should not be to declare our policies as biblical.”

These are wise words. I only wish Mr. Obama believed them.

Because in the same speech in which he quoted Lewis, Mr. Obama also said this:

And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.

For Mr. Obama to move from the Biblical injunction that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required” to higher marginal tax rates on those making $250,000 or more is laughable theology. Why draw the line at $250,000? Why not draw it at $125,000? Or $500,000? And why doesn’t Mr. Obama, in the name of Jesus, propose increasing the highest marginal tax rates to 90 percent? In fact, why doesn’t he endorse a plan for the government to take over people’s property and their life savings and distribute it to the poor under the banner of “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required”? Why doesn’t he propose a plan to take money from Americans making $25,000 a year in order to send it to people in Africa making a dollar a day? And why doesn’t St. Barack, in order to set an example for us all, commit that his net worth will never exceed $1 million? Or perhaps the argument being made by the president is that if we read the book of Acts carefully enough, we’ll find that God’s preferred tax rate just happens to be the one championed by Mr. Obama.

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Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, February 3, 2012

I wanted to add a note of caution to John Steele Gordon’s post regarding today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report on the unemployment rate.

It’s certainly true that there’s good news in the report. But if you examine the internal data, there are also grounds for concern.

To be specific: the labor-force participation number fell to 63.7 percent, the lowest (seasonably-adjusted) figure since May 1983. If the economy were stronger, an increase of 250,000 jobs would actually move the unemployment rate up a bit, since people who had given up looking for work would once again start (meaning they would be counted as part of the labor force again). But what appears to have happened in January is that the number of people being hired increased by less than a quarter-of-a-million while the number of people who dropped out of the labor force was around 1.2 million, a record figure. (For more, see here.)

Consider this: If the labor-force participation rate in January 2011 (64.2 percent) was the participation rate in January 2012 (63.7 percent), the unemployment rate would be 8.9 percent instead of 8.3 percent (see this piece by Matt McDonald for more). And if the same number of people were looking for work today as in 2007, unemployment would be right around 11 percent

In addition, as Tyler Durden points out [], in January, the number of part time workers rose by nearly 700,000 (from 27,040,000 to 27,739,000) while the number of full-time jobs increased by only 80,000 (from 113,765 to 113,845).

These are not good signs. And when you combine this jobs report with the new CBO report (which predicts unemployment will reach 8.8 percent in the fall), the news that last year we experienced the worst sales year on record for housing, and the news that real GDP in 2011 increased only 1.7 percent (down from 3.0 percent in 2010), I’m not terribly encouraged.

Gaining jobs is better than losing jobs, but our economy remains in a very weak condition.

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Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, February 2, 2012

Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal is a very good writer and a very smart man. But his claim that President Obama’s slimmed down version of his most recent State of the Union address – a speech Obama has taken on the road – is “soaring out in the country” is fairly wide of the mark.

We just learned, for example, that only 36 percent of likely voters grade the Obama administration’s handling of the economy at good or excellent, while a huge number — 62 percent — grade the president at fair to poor, with poor collecting the largest number: 45 percent. Now I recognize that people could like Obama’s speeches and disapprove of his policies. But in the end, they will (unlike 2008) cast their vote based on his deeds rather than his words. And Henninger’s claim that Obama is the “maestro” of the “inner melodies of life in America these days” isn’t something I detect when looking at polling data or, frankly, much else.

I’m glad Henninger is raising warning flags, because conservatives should assume the race against Obama won’t be easy. And there are reasons to guard against soaring confidence when it comes to the 2012 election. But my own sense of things is Obama long ago lost his claim to being America’s rhetorical maestro – and while his words may play well in a pre-selected crowd in Chandler, Arizona, they have fallen flat with most Americans.

If Barack Obama wins the presidency in November, it won’t be because he stirred the hearts of Americans. It will have very little to do with any inner melodies of life in America. It will be because he succeeded in utterly destroying the reputation of his opponent.

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Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, February 2, 2012

Jeffrey Anderson, writing in The Weekly Standard, makes an excellent point:

In President Obama’’s first budget, entitled (with no apparent sense of irony) “A New Era of Responsibility,”” he projected that the federal budget deficit in 2012 would be a rather hefty $581 billion. Fast-forwarding three years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now projects that it will instead be $1.079 trillion, meaning that, if the CBO is right, Obama was wrong by $498,000,000,000. To put that into perspective, that roughly half-trillion dollar margin of error is more than Obama allocated in this year’’s budget for Medicare. Medicare could magically have become free for 2012, and the deficit would still have exceeded Obama’’s earlier estimate.

It strikes me that President Obama isn’t simply vulnerable when it comes to the objective conditions of the country (though he is); it’s that he’s vulnerable based on what he promised versus what he has delivered as president. That’s true on a range of issues, including the unemployment rate (which we were told wouldn’t go above 8 percent if his stimulus package was passed; December was the 35th straight month with unemployment above 8 percent); health care costs (he promised to bend the health care cost curve down; it’s gone up); poverty going down (it’s gone up); cutting the deficit in half (it’s exploded); fixing the housing crisis (it’s gotten worse); improving America’s image in the world (we’re less popular in the Muslim world now than we were under Obama’s predecessor); and improving the political culture in Washington (the divisions have gotten deeper and Obama has set a record for polarization in each of his first three years in office).

Time and time again, Barack Obama has not only not done what he promised; his policies have moved things in the opposite direction.

He is a man who rode to office on his words and promises. In November, Obama might well be given a one-way ticket back to Chicago for the same reason.

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Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, February 2, 2012

In the sound bite heard ’round the world, Mitt Romney said in an interview yesterday with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

O’Brien jumped in. ”There are lots of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say, ’That sounds odd,’” she said.

“Well, finish the sentence, Soledad,” Romney replied. “I said I’m not concerned about the very poor that have a safety net, but if it has holes in it, I will repair them. We will hear from the Democrat party, the plight of the poor. And there’s no question, it’s not good being poor, and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor. But my campaign is focused on middle-income Americans. You can choose where to focus, you can focus on the rich. That’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus. My focus is on middle income Americans. Retirees living on Social Security, people who can’t find work, folks that have kids that are getting ready to go to college. These are the people most badly hurt during the Obama years. We have a very ample safety net and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it. But we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor. But the middle income Americans, they’re the folks that are really struggling right now and they need someone that can help get this economy going for them.”

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Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, February 1, 2012

1. The reach and scope of Governor Romney’s primary victory in Florida was enormous. He not only defeated Newt Gingrich by more than 14 points, Romney’s total was larger than the combined total of both Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Romney won among men and women; in all age, income, and education categories; among whites and Hispanics; among those who support and oppose the Tea Party; among those who decided early and those who decided late; and among evangelicals. Among the only categories Romney did not carry was those who described themselves “very conservative” (Gingrich carried 41 percent of the vote while Romney took 30 percent). Those who consider themselves “somewhat conservative” went for Romney 52 percent v. 32 percent for Gingrich.

Almost half the voters in Florida (46 percent) said electability was their top concern – and of that group, they preferred the former Massachusetts governor by 26 percentage points. And of the 62 percent of voters who said the economy was the issue that matters most to them, 52 percent went for Romney v. 30 percent for Gingrich.

2. The Washington Post makes this point: “Florida, the fourth state to vote this primary season, was not only the biggest prize yet, but also the purest test of where the party stands nationally. Unlike earlier primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Florida’s contest was open only to registered Republicans; about seven in 10 voters identified themselves as somewhat or very conservative, according to exit polls.”

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Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, January 30, 2012

On Friday, we learned that the annualized GDP growth rate in the fourth quarter was 2.8 percent. The press coverage the following days portrayed this news as encouraging. It wasn’t. The Great Recession officially ended in the middle of 2009; for the last quarter of 2011 to produce a growth rate less than 3.0 percent is evidence of a very weak economy. (Historically, the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery.) Indeed, the GDP increase for all of 2011 was a Lost Decade-like 1.7 percent. We lost ground from 2010, which itself was a relatively sickly year (GDP grew only 3.0 percent).

As a point of comparison, this editorial points out that once the Reagan recovery began in earnest in 1983, growth stayed above 5 percent for 18 months and never fell below 3.3 percent for 13 consecutive quarters. In the Obama years, on the other hand, growth has never exceeded 4 percent in any quarter.

For anyone to be encouraged by our latest GDP figures is evidence that, to paraphrase a formulation once used by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, we’re Defining Recovery Down.

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Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, January 30, 2012

Readers of “Contentions” know I have significant concerns when it comes to Newt Gingrich’s presidential candidacy. But even critics of the former House speaker should insist that the charges leveled against him be accurate rather than fictional. And so I agree with this editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which asserts that Mitt Romney’s attacks on Gingrich’s ethics case in the 1990s are misleading.

It’s clear the charges against Gingrich were trumped up; the IRS exonerated him after a multi-year investigation (see this CNN report at the time). For Governor Romney to now say, as he repeatedly does, that Gingrich “resigned in disgrace,” simply isn’t fair. Gingrich’s resignation was not connected to the ethics charges made against him. He was, in fact, the victim of a smear. And to give that smear new life is wrong. It really ought to stop.

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Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, January 30, 2012

In an intense primary battle, a lot of silly things are said. (Many of them, it turns out, are said by Sarah Palin, who seems intent on confirming every negative thing her critics have said about her.) Among them is the charge, repeated like rounds fired from a machine gun, that opposition to Newt Gingrich is based on those in the “establishment” who fear the scale of change he would bring to Washington. If you’re for Gingrich, so goes this story line, you’re for “genuine” and “fundamental” change. If you oppose Gingrich, on the other hand, you’re for “managing the decay” of America.

Except for this. The single most important idea, when it comes to fundamentally changing Washington, is the budget plan put forward by Representative Paul Ryan last April. When most massive-scale-of-change conservatives were defending Ryan’s plan against scorching criticisms from the left, Gingrich described the plan as an example of “right-wing social engineering.” It was Gingrich, not the rest of us, who was counseling caution, timidity, and an unwillingness to shape (rather than follow) public opinion. (The Medicare reform plan Gingrich eventually put out wasn’t nearly as bold and far-reaching as the one put out by Governor Romney.)

So much for Mr. Fundamental Change.

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Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, January 27, 2012

It’s official now. Barack Obama’s ratings are “historically polarized,” according to a new Gallup survey.

Jeffrey Jones of the Gallup organization writes, “The historically high gap between partisans’ job approval ratings of Barack Obama continued during Obama’s third year in office, with an average of 80 percent of Democrats and 12 percent of Republicans approving of the job he was doing… The 68-point gap between partisans’ approval ratings of Obama last year is nine points higher than that for any other president’s third year.” Obama, by the way, holds the record for the most polarized first and second years in office, too. Which means Obama has set a record for polarization every year he’s been in office.

So now is as good a time as any to remind people one of the core claims made by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign wasn’t simply that he would heal the planet; he would also heal the nation’s political breach. He would elevate the national debate. Reason would prevail over emotion. He would do away with what he called the “50 plus one” style of governing. Obama would “turn the page” on the “old politics” of division and anger. He would end a politics that “breeds division and conflict and cynicism.” He would help us to “rediscover our bonds to each other and … get out of this constant petty bickering that’s come to characterize our politics.” He would “cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past.”

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