Understanding Obama: Part 05

Examining the policy actions of the Obama administration is a good way to understand the logic driving them. Statements are often politically calculated and tailored to a specific audience, but actions are usually ideologically calculated and tailored to serve an agenda rather than an audience.

The Obama administration enacted policies by introducing its legislative agenda into Congress, by interpreting standing legislation, by executive order, by selective enforcement of various regulations, and by other methods.

As the idiom says, one can “connect the dots” and find the underlying patterns which drove Obama’s decisions — underlying patterns which are often in tension with verbal expressions of his agenda.

It was the distance between his rhetoric and his actions which caused many African-American voters to become disillusioned with Obama: far fewer Black voters supported him in 2012 than in 2008.

Black ideologues were vocal in their disappointment with Obama: “Obama’s presidency didn’t lead to Black progress,” comments Jason Riley. “Obama’s call for quiet, individual soul-searching was a way of saying that he had no answers,” writes Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. “Obama’s careful assessments of the political landscape are wrong,” remarks William Darity.

American-American voters had detected the operational doctrine which was behind the seemingly inspirational speeches.

Obama’s words didn’t match his deeds. Or, as many pundits commented, the agenda is not the agenda. The agenda presented in Obama’s words was not the agenda which motivated his deeds.

Black voters were disappointed because Obama failed to deliver meaningful progress to them. Obama’s operational agenda was not about African-Americans.

The operational agenda which drove the Obama administration’s decisions was about decreasing personal political liberty and individual freedom; it was about a net transfer of wealth away from U.S. citizens and into other countries; it was about lowering the diplomatic, economic, and military status of the United States relative to other nations; it was about taxation to place money in the hands of the government instead of in the hands of ordinary citizens; it was about consolidating regulatory power in the hands of the government.

The practical ideology behind the actions of the Obama administration was not about healthcare, although healthcare was often the excuse for amassing more power to the government; it was not about education, although education was often the excuse for accruing more regulatory power to the government; it was not about the environment, although the environment was often the excuse for the government’s confiscation of private property; it was not about racial equality, although social justice was often the excuse for higher taxes to enrich the government.

African-American detected the disconnect between Obama’s words and actions. That’s why fewer Black voters supported him in 2012 than in 2008.

One example is seen in Obama’s relationship with the media. Much of the media - what is called the “mainstream media” - had supported Obama in the 2008 election. Yet the White House didn’t treat them kindly, despite the many favors which they’d done for Obama.

Obama, of course, spoken grandly about the freedom of the press. But his actions contradicted his words: he avoided press conferences, and held fewer of them than presidents either before or after him. While praising the idea of a free and independent press, he undermined and obstructed journalists and created obstacles for their work, as David Limbaugh writes:

At a presser in May 2010, reporter Les Kinsolving asked Gibbs a question that elicited applause from his fellow reporters: why hadn’t Obama held a press conference since July 2009? Instead of answering the question directly, Gibbs made rude, snide, and condescending comments purporting to define what a press conference is. About a week later, CBS’s Chip Reid tried to ask the elusive Obama a question immediately following his signing of the Freedom of Press Act. Obama haughtily declared, “I’m not going to do a press conference today, but we’ll be seeing you guys during the course of the week.” Reid said the irony of asking Obama a question just as he signed the Freedom of Press Act was too rich to resist, describing it as a way of “expressing frustration from the press corps because Obama does so little in the way of press conferences and answering questions from us.”

Obama’s aloof persona - his clumsy and clunky attempts to be folksy fooled nobody - revealed that he did not understand or trust ordinary American citizens. From the age of ten onward, he was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents; his grandmother was the vice-president of a bank, and could afford to make sure that he never attended a public school, and that he was enrolled only in exclusive private schools.

His detached demeanor betrayed his approach - he was concerned to do something to voters, not for them; he sought to rearrange the social, political, and economic order, not to identify with the members of society. David Limbaugh notes:

Perhaps the most maddening aspect of Obama’s cavalier lifestyle is that it all comes at the expense of the taxpayers to whom Obama preaches the virtue of frugality. He and the first lady jet in style from city to city and country to country, scolding the wealthy for not paying their fair share and for offending all of us with their private jets. We the people, it seems, are expected to simply accept our fate — which, on our current trajectory, is national insolvency — and not ask why the same man who stirs our resentment against more wealthy Americans enjoys a lifestyle on par with European royalty — all financed by our own hard work. Obama himself need not worry about our future debt crisis, since he’ll be collecting a generous presidential pension. For the sake of the rest of us, we should get him collecting that pension four years early.

Obama’s deeds and lifestyle revealed the underlying ideology which motivated his policies. He was not interested in education, healthcare, the environment, or creating truly equal opportunities.

The topics which Obama presented as his central concerns - healthcare, the environment, education, racial justice - turned out to be mere facades. He used these topics to obtain votes and to persuade the general public to go along with his plans.

Behind the facade of those noble-sounding words lurked his true agenda: decreasing individual liberty and personal freedom; a net transfer of wealth away from U.S. citizens and into other countries; lowering the diplomatic, economic, and military status of the United States relative to other nations; taxation and higher taxes to enrich the government and to place money in the hands of the government instead of in the hands of ordinary citizens; consolidating regulatory power in the hands of the government; amassing and accruing more regulatory power to the government; and the government’s confiscation of private property.

Understanding Obama: Part 04

Although historians should not attempt to psychologically analyze the individuals of the past, they nonetheless can investigate a person’s childhood for clues about the factors which shape a person’s character, thoughts, and motives.

The poet William Wordsworth’s statement remains true even if often repeated: “The child is the father of the man.”

In the case of Barack Obama, one of the themes of his childhood is abandonment. His father abandoned him and his mother quickly after he was born - so quickly, in fact, that young Barack had no memories of his father. He was raised, then, primarily by his mother and by his maternal grandparents.

Eventually, his mother would have a series of other men in her life, none of whom, however, assumed any type of paternal role in Barack’s life.

Obama only saw his father once, at the age of ten.

The pain of having been raised without a father made a deep impression. “I only remember my father for one month my whole life, when I was 10,” Obama said in a television appearance. The pain of abandonment motivated him to try to be a good father:

His absence, I think, contributed to me really wanting to be a good dad, you know? Because I think not having him there made me say to myself “You know what? I want to make sure my girls feel like they’ve got somebody they can rely on.”

Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, was his primary caregiver. She was greatly aided by her parents. Obama’s maternal grandmother was the vice-president of a local bank, and had both wealth and influence to support young Barack. She was able to pay for exclusive private schools, so that Obama didn’t attend public schools. He never attended a public school in the United States, and attended an exclusive public school in Indonesia for one year. The rest of education was in private schools.

His formal education began in a Roman Catholic school, St. Francis, in Indonesia, which he seems to have attended for the first three grades of elementary school. Real estate agents in Indonesia organized a special public school for wealthy families; Obama attended that school for one year.

The rest of his education took place in the United States. He attended prestigious private school in Hawaii for grades five through twelve. The school had very few African-American students. As a high school student, Barack went to parties for nearby university students, because he wanted to meet other Black people. For the same reason, he sometimes socialized with people at Hawaii’s military bases.

In fairness, it should be noted that, although historians routinely cite Obama as the first ‘Black president’ or the first ‘Africa-American’ president of the United States, it is perhaps more accurate to list him as the first ‘biracial’ president. He wrote that his mother was as “white as milk,” and that his father was as “black as pitch.”

After high school, Obama went on to study at three exclusive private institutions: Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard.

Obama’s early years were shaped by the fact that his father abandoned him, by the fact that the series of men who moved through his mother’s life did not provide any paternal stability, and by the fact that his grandparents financed his life of exclusive privilege in private schools. This meant that Obama could not relate to that which African-Americans call their “Black experience.”

Subsequently, Obama’s notions of race were rather abstract and academic, which led to some clumsy and clunky moves by his administration, as David Limbaugh writes:

The expansion of race preferences in school admissions is a key goal of the Left, and this administration has worked hard to further it as well. In March 2010, the Obama administration filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, supporting the University of Texas’ use of racial preferences in undergraduate admissions. In the brief, the administration advocated preferences not just at the university level but also from kindergarten through high school: “In view of the importance of diversity in educational institutions, the United States, through the Departments of Education and Justice, supports the efforts of school systems and post-secondary educational institutions that wish to develop admissions policies that endeavor to achieve the educational benefits of diversity in accordance with [the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision upholding the use of preferences by the University of Michigan law school].”

From the time that young Barack was around ten years old, he was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents. His mother travelled widely and globally, while he remained at home in Hawaii.

With various men, she entered into a series of relationships, none of which lasted long. It was the grandparents who provide a sense of stability for Obama during his childhood and teenage years.

From his early childhood in Hawaii, to his middle childhood in Indonesia, to his late childhood and teenage years back in Hawaii, Obama was surrounded by people who were white American, Indonesians, Japanese, Chinese, Polynesian, and Hawaiian - but not Black. He was in many situations the only African-American.

His childhood playmates and teenage friends were of every race and ethnicity except Black. This must have shaped his self-perception.

Because his maternal grandmother was the vice-president of a bank, he was accustomed to a world of wealth and privilege. His standard of living and his social circles were above average. This may have made it difficult for him to empathize with those who struggle financially; one example, as David Limbaugh writes, was Obama’s interaction with California’s farmers:

One of the biggest, yet least publicized outrages in recent memory is the Obama administration’s assault on California farmers. Environmental regulations purporting to protect endangered species of fish resulted in tens of billions of gallons of water being diverted away from mountains close to Sacramento and into the ocean, greatly exacerbating drought conditions and ruining hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland - a crushing blow to California agriculture.

Obama’s persona has been characterized as cold, distant, and aloof. His attempt at being folksy are clumsy and affected. His manner was shaped by the fact that his father abandoned him, by a lifestyle of privilege among elites, and by the fact that his family kept him apart from his Black peers.

Between Obama’s election in 2008 and his reelection in 2012, the number of African-Americans who voted for him declined. What did they perceive about Obama?

Understanding Obama: Part 03

Historians are often tempted to speculate about the internal mental states of individuals - what a person thought, believed, or wanted. But historical methodology general forbids such speculation.

In reviewing the presidency of Barack Obama, then, a historian may only consider Obama’s recorded words and actions. Such only such verifiable evidence can count was what Obama may have thought, believed, or wanted.

Analyzing Obama’s words, the reader can conclude that he engaged in a political tactic of moving his agenda forward by leveraging it against an identified political opponent. The metaphor of lever is accurate: the negative pressure created by Obama’s attacks on various groups was equal to the forward moment it generated for his goals.

He created energy for his proposed tax reforms by accusing “lobbyists” and “special interests” of having manipulated the tax code - this, despite the fact that Obama, as a self-described “community organizer” had been both a lobbyist and a representative of special interests.

Same technique is seen in his effort to reduce incentives for employers to move jobs out of the United States, as historian David Limbaugh writes:

Obama’s assault on the private sector began early in his term. His main tactic was pitting people against people and groups against groups with unprecedented stridency. He couldn’t just push for a “fairer” tax system; he first had to vilify lobbyists, “special interests,” the wealthy, and corporate America. When he called for an end to tax breaks for U.S. corporations doing business abroad, he blamed “a broken tax system, written by well-connected lobbyists on behalf of well-heeled interests and individuals.”

Obama was not successful in his attempt to motivate companies to move jobs or capital invests back into the United States.

Consistently, he demonstrated that he did not like, understand, or trust the country, its people, or its Constitution. His efforts manifested a lack of respect or esteem for the ordinary citizen of the United States. As a self-identified progressive, his actions displayed an ideology in which government experts override the ballots of the voters.

Obama’s expertise, however, failed to deliver. Even when much of his agenda was put into place, either by legislation, or by executive order, the results were disappointing, as David Limbaugh reports:

President Obama has repeatedly acknowledged that he expects to be judged on his economic performance, and that if he does poorly the people will not re-elect him. So let’s take a look at his record. On February 17, 2009, Obama signed into law his $868 billion dollar stimulus bill, promising it would “save or create” — a ludicrous, immeasurable metric — 3 to 3.5 millon jobs by the end of 2010 and keep employment below 8 percent. In fact, unemployment greatly exceeded that the entire time, often surging past 9 percent.

The Constitution orchestrates a system in which decision-making is deliberately slowed, and in which the power of the government is limited. Laws tells citizens what they may not do, but the Constitution tells the government what it may not do.

Obama’s vision of government tolerated no limits. In his inaugural speech in 2009 , he claimed that the government could “heal the planet.” He could not endure a worldview in which government was limited so that society could act freely, and so that individuals could enjoy their personal political liberty.

Indeed, in some cases, Obama’s ideology called not only for government to overrule individual liberate and the organic functioning of society, but even for the diminishing of society. To that end, his policies were in some cases designed to reduce the standard of living in the United States.

Typically, a leader is expected to act in the best interests of his nation. Yet Obama was willing to inflict hardship on American voters, as measured by rising prices, falling wages, lower per capita net worth, and government-created shortages of various commodities.

A Quicker Way to Become a U.S. Citizen

The United States continues to be the most popular country in the world for immigration. People leaving other nations are more likely to travel to the U.S., and settle permanently there, than to any other nation in the world.

These immigrants often eventually desire citizenship, and are eager to find a way to accelerate that process.

According to journalist Stewart Smith, “every year, more than 8,000” people who are not U.S. citizens join the U.S. military. This represents a fast track to education, employment opportunities, better incomes, and eventual citizenship in the United States.

Recruiters find that “there is great interest from all over the world from foreigners wanting to serve in the United States Military.” Individuals want to join the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, or Coast Guard for a variety of reasons — educational opportunities and improved income among them — and “they know it can be a pathway to citizenship.” Smith adds that military members often “have an expedited process.”

Put simply, “a non-citizen can enlist in the military,” and “can go to the U.S. military recruiter of the branch of service” she or he might desire — like citizens, non-citizens can choose from among the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, or Coast Guard — and also, National Guard and Reserves.

The government has procedures “to allow military members from foreign countries to have an accelerated path to citizenship.” Smith explains the details: “In 1990, in the early days of Gulf War One, President George H.W. Bush signed an executive order which allowed any military member (active duty, Reserves, or National Guard) to apply for citizenship, without any residency requirement. This saves the military member five years” as compared to other applicants “for citizenship.” In other words, “the military helps” the applicant to “accelerate the process.”

Smith goes on to summarize: “Since July 3, 2002, under special provisions in Section 329 of the INA, President Bush signed an executive order authorizing all non-citizens who have served honorably in the U.S. armed forces on or after Sept. 11, 2001, to immediately file for citizenship. This order also covers veterans of certain designated past wars and conflicts. The authorization will remain in effect until a date designated by a future presidential executive order,” and is in fact still in effect.

In many cases, not only can a member of the military be on a fast track to citizenship, but her or his spouse can receive similar benefits, as Stewart Smith explains:

Special provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) state: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) may expedite the application and naturalization process for current members of the U.S. armed forces and recently discharged service members. Qualifying military service includes serving in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and National Guard. In addition, spouses of members of the U.S. armed forces who are or will be deployed may be eligible for expedited naturalization. Other provisions of the law also allow certain spouses to complete the naturalization process abroad.

The exact text defining these benefits is found the U.S. Code, at 8 USC 1440.

Clinton Orders Massive Bombing of Iraq

In 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered the U.S. military to undertake a large-scale aerial attack on Iraq. This offensive was provoked by Sadaam Hussein’s multiple offenses: as the dictator of Iraq, he’d violated human rights, he’d developed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and he’d arrogantly defied UN requests to inspect his weapon-producing facilities, despite the fact that he’d previously agreed to allow such inspections.

Although the Iraqi people were not of themselves violent, Iraq under the tyranny of Sadaam Hussein was a threat to neighboring nations, having already attacked and invaded Kuwait, causing thousands of deaths in the 1990/1991 war, as historian Gregory Ball writes:

In response to Saddam Hussein’s continued refusal to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors, the United States Government planned Operation DESERT FOX in the fall of 1998. The primary mission of DESERT FOX was to strike military targets in Iraq that contributed to its ability to produce, store, maintain, and deliver weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The U.S. government expected to achieve several goals with the operation. First, it would degrade Iraq’s ability to create and employ WMD. Second, the attacks would diminish Iraq’s capability to wage war against its neighbors. Third, the operation would impress upon Saddam Hussein the consequences of violating international agreements, including allowing United Nations inspectors unfettered access to Iraqi sites. The United States and Great Britain launched Operation DESERT FOX on December 16, 1998, after U.N. Chief Inspector Richard Butler notified the U.N. that Iraq had failed to provide full cooperation during inspections.

Although Operation Desert Fox was short in duration, lasting only a few days, it nonetheless inflicted massive destruction and numerous casualties on Iraq. President Clinton was able to demonstrate his willingness to engage in warfare, and his commitment to serving the United Nations and to implementing the consequences which Sadaam Hussein brought upon himself for violating UN agreements — agreements to which Hussein had committed himself.

Understanding Obama: Part 02

The axiomatic property of the Obama administration was that Obama did not understand, like, or trust the United States, the American people, or the Constitution. Built into Obama’s presidency was therefore an essential irony: he did not like the people who elected him, and did not trust the constitutional system which put him into the White House.

The checks and balances which the Constitution built into the structure of the government are designed to slow the process of legislation. This was conceived as a safeguard to protect the people from the government.

There is a natural temptation to want a strong government. It is assumed that a strong government could and would quickly address and fix problems and crises.

Yet there is great danger in a strong government. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” In other words, the government can only do things for you in proportion to what it can do to you.

A weak government is the surest way to protect individual political liberty and personal freedom. But protecting freedom and liberty was not among Obama’s goals. As historian David Limbaugh wrote in 2012:

President Obama has repeatedly revealed his impatience with our Constitution’s separation of powers and its checks and balances, lamenting that democracy is sometimes messy and frustrating. He just wants the other branches to get out of his way, because he can’t allow a silly inconvenience like the Constitution to obstruct his utopian vision for America.

Obama subjected the nation to great risks: shortcutting constitutional processes in one circumstance would allow eventually for shortcutting them in other circumstances. Eventually, due process and equal standing before the law would be endangered.

It is telling that many of the voters who elected Obama in 2008 and 2012 were the voters who chose to vote for President Trump in 2016. This was a telling rejection of Obama’s methods by the very electorate who placed him into the White House in the first place.

Understanding Obama: Part 01

What happened in the United States in November 2008? And what happened in the United States between January 2009 and January 2017? The election of Barack Obama and the presidency of Barack Obama constitute a shocking narrative: the country’s president did not like, trust, or understand the nation or its constitution.

To parse the verbs, the reader will note that Obama expressed a distaste both for the people of the United States and for the Constitution of the United States; he placed no confidence in, and refused to rely upon, the nation or the process which the nation codified into its constitution; and he demonstrated a lack of insight or comprension regarding the very people who voted for him and the very constitutional system which put him into the nation’s highest office.

The irony will not be lost: the president did not like, trust, or understand the citizens who voted for him and the constitutional process which made him president

Further irony lies in the fact that Obama was at one time paid to be a professor of constitutional law at a university.

In any case, historian David Limbaugh notes that “the destructive policies and actions of the Obama administration” form “Obama’s broad-based assault on the American republic.” Obama conducted a “war on our Constitution and our political economic liberties,” and an “assault on America’s economic, social, cultural, national security, business, and industrial institutions.”

The net result of Obama’s presidency is that many - millions - of voters who enthusiastically cast their ballots for him were dismayed enough, after observing his behavior in office, to vote for President Donald Trump.

The election of President Trump - whether the reader loves or hates him - is the ultimate fruit of the Obama administration.

Obama’s performance in office - from his appointment of corrupt and incompetent individuals like Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, to the 1.7 billion dollars he wasted trying to start a healthcare website - drove citizens to vote against the candidate who seemed to be a continuation of Obama’s policies.

The reader should not, however, hold Obama responsible for the failure of his presidency and his administration. The culpability lies rather with his handlers - the people who found and groomed him, directed his campaigns and political career, shaped his policies and wrote the speeches he delivered. Obama was, in some ways, a victim of a political machine which used him as a mouthpiece and as a frontman.

Winning a War with Dollars Instead of Bullets: Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative

The Cold War was a decades-long period of tension which shaped the second half of the twentieth century. Although there were periods of violence and bloodshed — like the Korean War and the Vietnam War — many of the Cold War years were times of tense and anxious peace.

The ‘peace’ which filled many of the Cold War years was not a pleasant peace. On the ‘western’ side, the United States and its NATO allies developed high-tech weapons. On the ‘eastern’ side, the Soviet Socialists and their Warsaw Pact allies did the same.

The stress and apprehension of these ‘peaceful’ years were caused by the knowledge that terribly powerful weapons were being stockpiled. Had these weapons been used on a large scale, the results would have been disastrous.

Peace was preserved by the fact that neither the United States nor the Soviet Socialists truly wanted to use these weapons. Leaders on both sides wanted to intimidate their opponents by owning these weapons, but they knew that using these weapons was an action to be avoided.

The Cold War was ‘cold’ because, rather than fighting and directly engaging their armies with each other, both sides wanted to pressure the other side by simply manufacturing these weapons.

The Cold War and its end were not about physical combat, but rather were ultimately about economics. Which side would be able to afford to develop and build the most terrifying weapons?

So it was that, upon taking office in January 1981, President Ronald Reagan began one of the most ambitious, and one of the most expensive, defensive systems ever conceived. In March 1983, President Reagan publicly announced the “Strategic Defense Initiative” (SDI), as historian Robert Maginnis writes:

By the mid-1980s, the economic strain of Russia’s very expensive military overreach was especially tough, a major reason to end the Cold War. The strain increased significantly once the newly minted President Ronald Reagan committed the US to increased resources for defense and introduced his bank-breaking “Star Wars” initiative, an expense the Kremlin was unprepared to match.

The SDI would make most of the USSR’s missiles useless. If the Soviet Socialists launched missiles at the United States, most of them would never reach their targets, because the SDI would stop the missiles in flight.

In order to overcome the SDI, the Soviet Socialists would have to develop an entire generation of sophisticated missiles. Such an effort would require billions of rubles or dollars.

The Soviet Socialists simply could not afford to develop offensive missiles which could successfully attack the United States. Missiles which could break through the SDI’s defensive shield were plainly too expensive.

The Cold War ended, then, because the Soviet Socialists ran out of money. The United States, rather than outfighting the USSR, merely outspent the Soviets.

Becoming President: Nixon in 1968

The political mood in the United States in 1968 was tumultuous. Richard Nixon competed with Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination.

In the Democratic Party, it seemed at first that incumbent President Lyndon Johnson would easily win the party’s nomination; but in March 1968, Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election.

After LBJ withdrew from the contest, four candidates seemed strong: Hubert Humphrey, Robert Kennedy, George Wallace, and Eugene McCarthy. It was not at all clear which of these would win the party’s nomination.

In June 1968, a Palestinian terrorist murdered Robert Kennedy. This created further confusion in the Democratic Party. George McGovern entered the race after Kennedy’s death, additionally complicating the situation.

Eugene McCarthy represented the anti-war radicals; Humphrey represented the labor unions and major urban political machines within the Democratic Party; Wallace represented the segregationists who opposed Nixon’s support of civil rights legislation.

At the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago in August 1968, the party ultimately chose Hubert Humphey as its candidate, but the ‘big story’ in the media was the major rioting in downtown Chicago in the area surrounding the convention. Radicals and revolutionaries of various stripes, beginning with anti-war activists but then spreading to all manner of troublemakers, caused damage and injury. Hundreds of rioters and hundreds of police were wounded.

When the dust settled, then, it was Nixon vs. Humphrey in 1968. Recalling the campaign, Donald Rumsfeld writes:

Amid anger and protest, Nixon offered himself as a source of reassurance and stability. For voters it was a welcome change from the anguished presidency of Lyndon Johnson. But because he had been defeated in two high-profile elections during the past decade, he had to battle the impression that he was a loser.

Humphrey suffered from the internal fractures within his Democratic Party. By contrast, the Republican Party was unified behind Nixon.

But Nixon had suffered a prominent defeat in the 1960 presidential election against Kennedy, and had further endured a loss in the 1962 California gubernatorial election. How could Nixon shake the reputation of being a loser?

Nixon gained much public sympathy after the 1962 election, when Howard Smith, a news broadcaster on the ABC network, invited Alger Hiss to comment on Nixon’s losses.

Alger Hiss was a convicted felon — a Soviet spy who’d been paid to reveal U.S. government secrets to the KGB in Moscow, and who’d been paid to give misleading advice to U.S. policymakers, including President Roosevelt — and the America public was not happy with the network for giving airtime to a Soviet Socialist espionage agent.

Rebounding from his political losses, and gaining public sympathy from Hiss’s TV appearance, Nixon emerged as a strong leader. Nixon eventually won the November 1968 election by a landslide.

Ronald Reagan vs. John Maynard Keynes

Much of President Reagan’s economic policy was directed at undoing New Deal policies which were leftover from the Great Depression. These policies were fifty years old by the time Reagan was in office, and he thought that they needed to be updated, revised, or replaced.

Reagan was elected in 1980 and took office in 1981. In a 1986 comment in the Wall Street Journal, he noted that Keynesian economics were “a legacy from a period when I was back in college studying economics.”

Indeed, Keynesian theories began making an appearance with early publications like Indian Currency and Finance, published by Keynes in 1913. His major publications came later, like The Economic Consequences of Peace in 1919, A Tract on Monetary Reform in 1923, The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill in 1925, and his large systematic explication in the Treatise on Money in 1930.

Keynesian views were widely understood by the time Ronald Reagan graduated from college in 1932.

Many historians see the influence of Keynes in FDR’s “New Deal” policies, policies which were designed to heal the damage done by the Great Depression, but which instead caused the Depression to last longer and do deeper harm to the economy.

By the time Ronald Reagan became president, many voters believed that it was time to discard Keynesian economics and find other, more credible, economic policy systems.

Re-Examining the Integration Narrative: School Desegregation Before Brown

The simple narrative taught in most history textbooks is that prior to 1954, schools in the United States were divided into two categories: those for Black children and those for White children. After the landmark decision in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, schools across the country were gradually integrated, sometimes against resistance, to the point at which they are now largely, if not entirely, integrated.

This simple narrative is wrong.

When the case of Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al. was first presented to the Supreme Court in 1952, there were already many integrated schools around the United States.

Desegregated schools were nothing new; in fact, they were almost a century old. Some schools, like Berea College in Kentucky, were integrated even prior to the Civil War.

There is a great deal of documentation about desegregation before 1954.

Yearbooks from high schools reveal substantial integration among students in towns like Muncie, Indiana. In the mid-1940s, African-American students and white students were mixed together in academic classes, in sports, and in music groups like choirs.

Similar instances of desegregation appear in high schools in other cities.

Integrated schools since the time of the Civil War were more common in the North than in the South, more common in smaller towns than in large cities, and more common in parochial private schools than in preparatory boarding schools. The main targets of the Supreme Court’s Brown decision were public high schools in large cities in the South.

Some small towns integrated out of economic necessity rather than moral principle. Many parochial schools considered it part of their mission to integrate. Some schools in the North had never been segregated, and so had no need to desegregate.

Oversimplified narratives in history textbooks could lead students to assume that all schools were segregated prior to 1954, while in reality, by 1954, there were large numbers of integrated schools.

Why Do Governments Do What They Do? Economic Policy As Political Choice

Governments, all too often, intervene in economies, regulating, incentivizing, subsidizing, and generally gumming up the works, making marketplaces less nimble, and slowing creative processes. Why?

Some imagine the government as the neutral umpire, the objective referee who keeps the playing field level and fair. Others imagine government as the benevolent patriarch, reaching in with parental wisdom to adjust market forces. But neither of these images prevails.

Instead, governments routinely get in the way of wealth creation, and inhibit the very opportunities which they often claim to foster. James Buchanan, recipient of the Nobel Prize, sought to explain this quirky characteristic of governments, as journalist Dylan Matthews writes:

Buchanan is most famous for breathing new life into political economy, the subfield of economics and political science that studies political institutions, and in particular how they affect the economy. In particular, Buchanan is strongly associated with public choice theory, an approach which assumes that individual actors in political contexts are out for themselves, and then uses game theory to model their choices, with the hope of gaining insight into the incentives faced by political actors.

Policymakers have various motives, and the average of these motives - much like the net effect of several vectors in physics and engineering - determine their policy choices. Legislators are not thinking in the abstractions of equations and graphs which constitute academic economics.

Governmental regulators are flesh-and-blood human beings who are concerned about public perceptions, about private success, and whose preconceptions and ideologies shape their decisions with as much efficacy as empirical data.

Before Buchanan, economics was primarily about how individuals make choices in the private sphere. He was among the first to argue that it could explain their choices in the public sphere as well. Traditionally, economists have treated the government as a dictatorial “social planner” which is capable of impartially correcting failures in private markets. Buchanan's contribution was pointing out that that social planner also responded to incentives, and that they sometimes pushed him to make markets worse off than he found them.

Legislators, even those with the best of motives, nudge policies in suboptimal directions merely by being one of many vectors which will be averaged out: a perfect policy, when averaged with many other policies, does not steer policy toward perfection.

The legislators who have less than the best motives will clearly see opportunities for gain as they shape policy. This need not be flagrantly illegal or immoral, but merely an opportunity to benefit his constituency, which is, after all, the reason he was elected. But what benefits his constituents in the short term might harm others areas of the country in the long run, and therefore ultimately be suboptimal for everyone.

Government intervention will never be the crystalline abstraction which some academic economists hope it to be. At its best, it will be an approximation, an averaging of policies, in which even very good policies, when averaged, might produce less than very good results.

The safest conclusion, itself also not quite perfect, is to minimize regulation. Given that governmental intervention is never perfect, it would be wise to have as little of it as possible.

The Story Behind the Story: Flint Was Not the First Water Crisis

The problems with government-provided drinking water pipelines in Flint, Michigan began in 2014, and by 2015 had obtained a high level of attention in news media. Since then, the problems have been resolved, and the water supply for citizens of Flint is once again safe to drink.

This story has been well documented in various media - and from various political viewpoints. The basic narrative is clear.

What is less well known is that this is not the first such water crisis.

A decade earlier, a similar series of events unfolded in the comfortable upper-middle-class neighborhoods of Washington, D.C.

The story broke in 2002 in little-known, alternative media outlets like the Washington City Paper. Surprisingly, there was little response from the government or from the mainstream media.

The neighborhoods affected by lead in their drinking water were economically middle- or upper-class, and racially mostly white.

The problem was largely ignored for over two years. Citizens were drinking lead-tainted water on a large scale.

In 2004, the Washington Post began to follow the story. Gradually, the size and scope of the problem became clear to the mainstream media. Eventually, action was taken, and the problem was corrected.

Comparing Washington to Flint, several contrasts emerge.

Flint’s problem was publicized and corrected quickly - within a year. Washington’s problem was ignored for over two years, and only after two years were steps taken to correct the problem.

Why the difference?

Flint had two variables which worked in its favor:

First, Flint has a manufacturing sector; Washington doesn’t. While Flint’s factories have declined in number and activity over the decades, there are still functioning manufacturing facilities in the city. The very first warning about water quality problems came from a General Motors plant. GM was concerned that high levels of lead in the water could damage machinery. If GM hadn’t raised the alarm, the problem could have continued for much longer.

Second, Flint has a significant African-American population; the affected neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. were mainly white. The residents of Flint were used to alerting political activists about their concerns, and the activists, in turn, were in the habit of worrying about Flint. Activists were more likely to engage about a public health issue in Flint than in a comfortable neighborhood in Washington.

So it was that Flint’s water-quality problems gained attention quickly and were corrected quickly, while the citizens of Washington were exposed to high levels of lead for a longer time. The public health problems in Washington are correspondingly greater, as data show.

The Cold War: An Unwanted Leadership Role for America

The Cold War was a span of years which greatly shaped the second half of the twentieth century. Its roots, however, were present already early in the first half of the century.

As early as 1919, the newly-formed Soviet Union, which was still fighting a civil war to stabilize its existence, was organizing covert activities inside the United States – activities designed to destabilize and eventually overthrow the government. The communists in America hoped to do away with the Constitution, with personal freedom, and with political liberty.

Although this espionage network had already existed for several decades, it was not until 1946 that the period known as the ‘Cold War’ began. The start of this era was marked by the end of World War II, and by the USSR’s procurement of atomic weapon technology.

The end of WW2 was also the end of an uncomfortable but necessary cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Socialists. With the pretense of an alliance gone, the communists could unabashedly pursue their goal of dominating nations in Europe and Asia, and eventually, their goal of placing American under a communist dictatorship, as historian Robert Maginnis writes:

World War II ended in 1945, and America’s leaders anticipated that the Soviet Union would continue the level of cooperation enjoyed during the war years. After all, President Franklin Roosevelt, an ideological progressive, believed the partnership that defeated the Axis Powers, which included Russia, would coalesce around his vision of a United Nations that would prevent future world wars. Roosevelt’s dream for the United Nations is traceable to his progressive ideological brother, President Woodrow Wilson, a man who shared a similar ambition after World War I in the form of the League of Nations.

History repeats itself: two American presidents, both at the end of a world war, blinded by the illusion that a group of international ambassadors would be able to prevent future wars. Roosevelt and Wilson posed a noble and idealistic goal, but impractical and impossible one.

If we believe that both of these presidents were sincere in wanting a world parliament to preclude wars, then we can conclude that both were blinded to the risks that such well-intentioned efforts could prove to be a facade behind which subtle influences would actually work to erode national sovereignty instead of strive toward world peace. Instead of preventing war, the League of Nations and the United Nations could serve as cover to hide the work of agents who wanted to undermine the United States Constitution.

Other leaders shared the desire for peace, but saw that these gatherings of diplomats were not the mechanism to ensure peace. It became clear that these conventions would in fact attempt to override the will of the American voters.

Free citizens can remain free only if no external powers violate the results of free and fair elections. Once the people have spoken, no gathering of foreign diplomats has the right to overturn their vote.

But the League of Nations was headed in that direction, and the United Nations has in fact reached the point at which it sees itself as authorized to ignore the expressed will of the people. The USSR hoped to use the United Nations to dissolve personal freedom and individual political liberty.

The League failed, thanks to Republican senators suspicious of international entanglements, and Roosevelt’s grand hope for a “true war-preventing organization” really never materialized after the Second World War, because Roosevelt’s United Nations ultimately became little more than a toothless, empty-headed debating forum on the Hudson River in Manhattan, New York.

After the concept of the United Nations proved to be unrealistic, the tensions which fueled the Cold War took another turn. In the postwar years, as the Soviet Socialists expanded into country after country, establishing their communist military dictatorships, the Americans and the nations of western Europe used the word ‘containment’ to describe their response: they hoped to stop Soviet expansion.

The United States inherited from the Second War the global leadership mantle, a role it was ill prepared to fulfill. It quickly saw a rising Soviet Union that must be stopped, and therefore it embraced containment as the only viable strategy. But that containment strategy was primarily a military power exercise that created mutual defense alliances that became little more than an anti-communist alliance and spurred an arms race.

The Cold War created a bipolar paradigm, in which most of the world’s nations allied themselves either with the West or the East. The West promoted free market economics, personal political liberty, property rights, a respect for the individual, and the freedoms of speech, religion, and the press.

The East looked to the state, the government, to control and own property, and to manage industrial production and the economy. The state imposed its own education with no alternatives, imposed atheism, and imposed socialist dogma. Individuals were told that they could not make any significant choices, whether in matters of the economy or in the field of politics. There was no free speech or free press; instead, all aspects of life were saturated with socialist propaganda.

A small number of the world’s nations did not fit comfortably into this East-West pattern. The Islamic despots of the Near East and Middle East, for example, did not embrace Soviet socialism because of its strictly enforced atheism and because Islam was not interested in the USSR’s economic agenda. These Muslim regimes, however, also did not like the personal freedom which the West promoted.