Gerald Ford: America’s Favorite Vice President

Many people respected and liked Gerald Ford, but few thought that he’d one day become the vice president of the United States, and even fewer suspected that he’d one day be president. Until 1973, he was a leader in the United States House of Representatives, and congressman representing the state of Michigan.

In that year, Spiro Agnew resigned. Agnew had been vice president since January 1969, but questions about his financial ethics forced him to leave the office. Under the watchful eyes of the American public, and of Congress, President Nixon had to appoint a new vice president. The new VP had to be able to undergo the most careful investigations and be able to show that he was free of any hint of scandalous behavior.

Despite the detailed scrutiny of both government and media, Gerald Ford proved to have a spotless record regarding both public and private behavior.

Once he was confirmed by the both houses of Congress and became VP December 1973, he found that his work would be challenging, as historian Thomas DeFrank writes:

As vice president, Ford was faced with one of the more daunting assignments any American politician has ever confronted. He was determined to remain loyal to his president, the old friend and former congressional colleague who’d made him VP. He was also intent on staying true to his conscience, and much of what he saw unfolding at the White House troubled him. More than anything else, he was also desperate to do everything in his power to hold his beloved Republican Party together amid the wreckage of Watergate.

As VP, Ford was immensely popular with Americans. He was, in fact, much more popular than Nixon at the time. It is awkward for a vice president to be more popular than the president for whom he works.

Realizing that he would eventually, and probably soon, be president, Ford was careful to preserve his connection to the ordinary American citizens by not supporting Nixon too much, as Thomas DeFrank notes:

Every vice president struggles under the yoke of playing second fiddle, but Watergate made the part far trickier for Ford. Even in the beginning, when he still believed Nixon was innocent, Ford was smart enough to realize there was a reasonable chance he might become president anyway. If it happened, he’d need to come before a wounded and troubled nation as the Great Healer. By defending Nixon too forcefully, he risked being tarred as an Agnewesque polarizer, diminishing his capacity to reunite the nation

During his brief time — less than one year — as vice president, the public, the media, and the other leaders in government uniformly perceived Ford as honest, ethical, and decent.

This would become vitally important when he became president in August 1974.

LBJ, The Great Society, and Unintended Consequences: Good Intentions, Bad Results

With much fanfare, President Lyndon Johnson promoted his legislative agenda, including a bundle of programs which he called ‘The Great Society.’ Johnson was most probably sincere in his desire to alleviate the misery of poverty, both because he knew that it would increase his popularity, and because of genuine human compassion. LBJ saw conditions in Texas and in Appalachia which prompted him to use the slogan, ‘War on Poverty.’

Johnson’s simultaneous endorsement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act gave the impression that Great Society programs would also help lift African-Americans out of poverty. But, as historian Ben Shapiro writes, “The Great Society significantly slowed economic progress for black Americans.”

“Government involvement is far more to blame” for “the stagnant rates of increase in black prosperity.” In the past, the government had imposed racism when it legislated “Jim Crow Laws.” But starting in the mid-1960s, it was anti-poverty programs which did the most harm to the Black community.

The Great Society programs of President Lyndon Johnson, touted as a sort of reparations-lite by Johnson allies, actually harmed the black community in significant ways that continue to play out today. According to former Air Force One steward Ronald MacMillan, LBJ pushed the Great Society programs and civil rights bill out of desire to win black votes.

Johnson frequently used inappropriate and hateful epithets to refer to African-Americans, usually the “n-word” but also others. His racist vocabulary has been well documented.

But Johnson hoped to persuade Black voters to support him and his political party. He presented his programs as their salvation. Yet the biggest cause of poverty turned out to be LBJ’s anti-poverty programs.

In essence, the Great Society drove impoverished black people into dependency. In 1960, 22 percent of black children were born out of wedlock; today, that number is over 70 percent. The single greatest indicator of intergenerational poverty is single motherhood. As Thomas Sowell writes, “What about ghetto riots, crimes in general and murder in particular? What about low levels of labor force participation and high levels of welfare dependency? None of those things was as bad in the first 100 years after slavery as they became in the wake of the policies and notions of the 1960s.”

An analysis by the Brookings Institute shows that, prior to Great Society programs, African-Americans were making progress: “From 1940 to 1970, black men cut the income gap [with white men] by about a third.” Black wage-earners were experiencing rising wages and were headed for equal pay.

This optimistic trend, however, faded, as Ben Shapiro notes: “Such growth slowed after the implementation of the Great Society. According to economists John J. Donahue III and James Heckman, black men saw ‘virtually no improvement’ in wages” after LBJ’s initiatives were implemented.

Thomas Sowell notes that African-Americans made the largest and fastest economic progress before Great Society programs were launched. Johnson’s war on poverty actually slowed the gains being made by Blacks, as Sowell writes:

Despite the grand myth that black economic progress began or accelerated with the passage of the Civil Rights laws and “War on Poverty” programs of the 1960s, the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. This was before any of those programs began. Over the next 20 years, the poverty rate among blacks fell another 18 percentage points, compared to the 40-point drop in the previous 20 years. This was the continuation of a previous economic trend, at a slower rate of progress, not the economic grand deliverance.

It’s worth noting that the Great Society programs did not help white people either, or Latinos, or Native American Indians. Johnson’s programs have been in place for fifty years, but poverty rates remain unchanged, as Ben Shapiro notes:

As for the Great Society itself, poverty rates in the United States have remained largely unchanged: the government spends $9,000 per welfare recipient per year in the United States, and yet Americans had the same poverty rate in 2013 as they did in 1963. Living standards have improved, but dependency has not decreased.

The number of Americans and the percentage of the American population living in poverty declined throughout the 1940s and 1950s. But those numbers have been frozen since the mid-1960s. Johnson’s programs are expensive but ineffective.

The Great Society programs started by costing billions; now they cost trillions. These programs have inflicted suffering by means of taxation and by means of expanding the national debt. But these programs have not reduced poverty — for African-Americans, for whites, for Latinos, or for anyone else.

Understanding Obama: Part 06

The election of Barack Obama to the U.S. Presidency was a singular event. For the first time, the nation’s chief executive was African-American, or more precisely, biracial. As Obama noted, writing about his parents, “he was as black as pitch, my mother white as milk.”

Obama’s racial ambiguity would be both an asset that he would deploy on the campaign trail, but also an Achille’s heal which would ultimately erode his support among Black voters.

Although his presidency was greeted at first with exuberant jubilation among African-American citizens, in time, Black activists like William Darity would author articles with titles like “Barack Obama Failed Black Americans.” What caused Black voters to see through the Obama image?

The sad reality for millions of African-Americans was that, during the eight years of the Obama presidency, unemployment rose faster among Blacks than among any other racial or ethnic group; income declined faster; and family net wealth declined farther and faster. Other numbers extend that trend: home ownership, employment among teenagers, etc.

If the Obama administration wasn’t able, or didn’t care, to help African-Americans in terms of economic opportunity, did it help them in any other way?

Obama did extend help to selected individuals, some of whom were Black. For example, Obama fired inspector general Gerald Walpin in order to help Kevin Johnson, an NBA star turned politician. The complex series of events is explained by historian David Limbaugh:

On July 11, 2009, Obama abruptly announced his decision to fire Gerald Walpin. He sent letters to leaders of the Senate and House notifying them of the termination, to take effect in thirty days. His stated reason? He had lost “the fullest confidence” in Walpin, which is “vital” in “the appointees serving as Inspectors General.”

After only six months in office, Obama fired a federal employee. The only justification for the dismissal given by Obama was a loss of confidence.

The lack of detail is significant. What caused this lack of confidence? Was there there theft, or embezzlement, or bribery?

This was not your ordinary executive firing of an at-will staffer. The Inspector General is a highly sensitive position that acts as a watchdog against government corruption and must not be occupied by a lapdog who provides cover for wrongdoing. To be fired by the leader of the very branch of government one is assigned to investigate is enough to create a presumption of suspicion.

Who suspected whom of doing what?

If Obama had suspected Gerald Walpin of unethical behavior, then the usual process would have included some investigation or report. Instead, Obama merely referred vaguely to confidence.

On the other hand, if the suspicion was directed at Obama, i.e., that Obama’s firing of Walpin was unethical, then Obama’s vague explanation would make sense.

The Inspector General, and the various inspectors general who work in that capacity, are tasked with investigating unethical, negligent, or corrupt practices in government. A president who fires an inspector general without substantive explanation is revealing that there is something to hide, that this inspector general had discovered that there was something to hide, and that the president in question is actively engaged in a cover-up.

Suspicion immediately arose that Obama was firing Walpin because of Walpin’s investigation of Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star and mayor of Sacramento, California, who is a strong Obama supporter and personal friend. Before becoming mayor, Johnson had established a non-profit called St. HOPE to help “revitalize inner-city communities through public education, civic leadership, economic development and the arts.” After opening an investigation into whether St. HOPE had misused an $850,000 AmeriCorps grant, Walpin discovered that Johnson had used AmeriCorps funds to pay volunteers to participate in political activities involving the school board and to run personal errands for Johnson like washing his car.

Gerald Walpin had discovered that Obama’s friend Kevin Johnson had been misappropriating taxpayer dollars for his own personal benefit. Obama fired Walpin to protect Kevin Johnson.

Kevin Johnson was ultimately forced to repay the money, and the charitable organization which he’d founded, St. HOPE, was ineligible to receive any federal funding for a period of time.

How did this seem to Black voters? Within six months of taking office in 2009, Obama devoted his attention and energy to firing an investigator who’d uncovered the financial corruption of one of Obama’s friends. But Obama’s time and attention, if they were directed toward African-Americans at all, were not effective in reducing unemployment, increasing wages, creating jobs, or growing the net personal wealth of Black Americans.

By 2012, the situation hadn’t changed, with unemployment figures hovering around 8% or 9%, as David Limbaugh reports:

The standard unemployment figures also downplay another unsettling trend: private-sector job creation is at near record lows. Fewer existing businesses are hiring and fewer entrepreneurs are starting new businesses, meaning fewer jobs are available for the unemployed. Prior to the recession, more than 5 million new employees were hired each month, but this figure fell to 3.6 million by June 2009. By February 2012 it had only slightly improved to 4 million. While fewer employees are being laid off since the start of the recession, unemployment remains high because of these sluggish job creation figures.

After four years in office, unemployment was high, and unemployment for African-Americans was even higher. But after only six months in office, Obama had leapt into action to rescue one of his personal friends from the legal consequences of misusing federal funds — i.e., to rescue his friend from the legal consequences of crime.

It is no surprise, then, that in November 2012, fewer Blacks voted for Obama than in November 2008. Obama had lost significant amounts of support among the African-Americans who’s so enthusiastically greeted his presidency four years earlier.

Varieties of Nationalism: From Benign to Malignant

The word ‘nationalism’ is widely used, and too often carelessly used. Reflection reveals that this word can refer to a variety of things, from a beneficial and peaceful sentiment to an aggressive and warlike passion.

The evil version of “nationalism” is a value system in which the existence, growth, and power of the nation-state is the ultimate value, outranking other potential values like family, justice, duty, honor, religious faith, art, or friendship. This evil type of nationalism can lead to combat and hostility, because if the nation-state is the ultimate value, then anything or anyone else can be sacrificed for the good of the nation-state.

As historian Jill Lepore writes, the evil form of

nationalism is often thought of as what happens which a nation-state demands extraordinary sacrifices from its people — especially by participating in wars of aggression — and, requiring their consent, asks for that sacrifice in the name of the nation. The more outrageous the war, the harder it is to gain that consent, the more grotesque the depiction of the nation’s enemies.

By contrast, the good version of “nationalism” is not only salutary, but it is even necessary for a peaceful global community. This form of nationalism is a fondness for one’s own nation, and the ability to objectively see the achievements and contributions of one’s own nation. Importantly, such peaceful nationalism also allows the individual to appreciate the contributions and achievements of other nations. This type of nationalism leads to peaceful international relations because it allows each nation to have respect both for itself and for other nations.

The term ‘nation-state’ merits definition: a state is a clearly demarcated geographical territory with its own government. In common language, a ‘state’ is what we often call a ‘country.’ A ‘nation’ is an ethnic group — a group which shares a language, or a culture, or a shared narrative history, or a way of life, or artistic traditions like clothing, music, and food. A ‘nation-state’ is when a nation and a state are coextensive, i.e., when they are the same thing.

Notably, it is sometimes debated as to whether the United States is a nation-state. It is a state in any case; but the question is posed as to whether there is enough of a common culture to merit calling the United States a nation. Those who argue that the U.S. is not a nation point to the diversity of religions, languages, and cultures within the territory. Those who say that the U.S. is a nation point to commonalities which universally join the citizens: bluejeans, hamburgers, a fondness for cars (the ‘automobile lifestyle’), popular sporting events, popular music, etc.

The reader will decide for herself or himself.

So it is, then, that learning to have a fondness for one’s own nation, and to appreciate the achievements of one’s own nation, is not necessarily a warlike sentiment. It is, however, a necessary perspective for creating a peaceful community of nations: wholesome friendships between countries can be formed only by those nations with a healthy appreciation for both themselves and for other nations.

Tolerance as a Foundational Value for Political Liberty: What Tolerance Is, and What Tolerance Isn’t

In any society that hopes to succeed in maintaining a government of freely-elected representatives, and in any society that hopes to recognize the dignity and value of each and every individual human life, tolerance is a necessary precondition. Yet the meaning of ‘tolerance’ is blurred and made ambiguous by inexact usage.

Tolerance is allowing individuals to have and express various points of view, and especially those which are at a variance with one’s own. Tolerance is permitting beliefs and opinions to be presented and promoted.

A simple example suffices: in an imaginary town, Mr. Jones and Mr. Miller are both candidates, hoping to be elected mayor. Each candidate has his own group of supporters. The citizens who support Mr. Jones, however, acknowledge the right of other citizens to support Mr. Miller, and reciprocally, the supporters of Mr. Miller recognize the right of other citizens to advocate for Mr. Jones.

This is already obvious from the various republics with which the reader will be acquainted.

The question becomes unclear, however, because of slogans and political rhetoric which uses a variety of words: “welcome, affirm, support, accept, celebrate.” These words point to something different than tolerance.

This can be seen in example. Civil society expects the supporters of one candidate to tolerate, or allow, the supporters of a competing candidate to live unabused and free to express their allegiances. The supporters of Mr. Jones for mayor tolerate the supporters of Mr. Miller, and vice versa.

But civil society does not expect the supporters of one candidate to “welcome, affirm, support, accept, or celebrate” campaigns and advocacy for a competing candidate. Such an expectation would be the very opposite of what is understood to be a democratic society. A free society does not ask individuals to surrender their opinions and views; rather it asks merely that they tolerate the existence of competing views, and contend with those competing views in a respectful disagreement.

Thus the public should reject the perpetual call for voters to “welcome, affirm, support, accept, and celebrate” some political viewpoint. The citizens should, on the contrary, “tolerate and allow” diverse viewpoints.

The reader will transfer this principle and apply it to the controversial questions and “hot-button” issues of the current time.

Scaling Down: Preparing for Smaller Wars

In January 1950, President Harry Truman requested the Department of State and the Department of Defense to jointly compose a document regarding U.S. objectives in both diplomatic and military concerns. In April, he received the report, a top-secret document titled NSC-68.

This document remained classified until 1975, but is now available to the reading public. It shaped much of American strategic and geopolitical thought throughout the 1950s and 1960s. It addressed both strategy and ideology.

NSC-68 also included references to the nation’s founding texts from the 1700s, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Federalist Papers.

The report’s authors were concerned to distinguish between, on the one hand, massive wars of annihilation on a global scale, and on the other hand, smaller regional conflicts:

The mischief may be a global war or it may be a Soviet campaign for limited objectives. In either case we should take no avoidable initiative which would cause it to become a war of annihilation, and if we have the forces to defeat a Soviet drive for limited objectives it may well be to our interest not to let it become a global war.

It was therefore incumbent upon the United States military establishment to be prepared for both types of conflict. But the U.S. military in 1950 was not ready, as author Russell Weigley writes:

NSC-68 suggested a danger of limited war, of Communist military adventures designed not to annihilate the West but merely to expand the periphery of the Communist domains, limited enough that an American riposte of atomic annihilation would be disproportionate in both morality and expediency. To retaliate against a Communist military initiative on any but an atomic scale, the American armed forces in 1950 were ill equipped. Ten understrength Army divisions and eleven regimental combat teams, 671 Navy ships, two understrength Marine Corps divisions, and forty-eight Air Force wings (the buildup not yet having reached the old figure of fifty-five) were stretched thinly around the world.

It would not be fitting to respond, e.g., to the Soviet blockade of Berlin by unleashing America’s nuclear arsenal. Although some military strategists in the late 1940s saw the atomic bomb as the answer to nearly any tactical question, it was now becoming clear that America should have a full conventional force as well.

The Air Force atomic striking force, embodied now in eighteen wings of the Strategic Air Command, was the only American military organization possessing a formidable instant readiness capacity. So much did Americans, including the government, succeed in convincing themselves that the atomic bomb was a sovereign remedy for all military ailments, so ingrained was the American habit of thinking of war in terms of annihilative victories, that occasional warnings of limited war went more than unheeded, and people, government, and much of the military could scarcely conceive of a Communist military thrust of lesser dimensions than World War III.

So it happened, then, that in June 1950, when North Korea attacked South Korea, the United States was in possession of large nuclear arsenal, but a barely serviceable - if at all serviceable - infantry. The United States was prepared for global atomic war, but the Soviet Socialists chose smaller proxy wars - Korea, Vietnam - and even smaller military maneuvers to quell uprisings - Berlin 1953, Hungary 1956, Prague 1968.

America’s brief romance with the atomic bomb was over. By the mid-1950s, it was clear that the United States needed a full conventional force alongside its nuclear arsenal.

This would require a bit of a scramble to make up for the years in the late 1940s during which the conventional forces were allowed to languish. The Korean War included a U.S. Army which was underfunded and undersized.

In the postwar decades, the United States needed to have both a strategic nuclear force as well as sufficient conventional forces in the traditional Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.

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.