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| The Face of Evil |
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| Birds of a feather. |
On this day in 1994, Bill Clinton's presidency was saved.
It didn't look that way at the time. After threatening to keep Congress in session until a health-care bill was passed, then Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell gave up and let members return home for their recess. The legislative push for universal health care never recovered, and scarcely 11 weeks later Republicans led by Newt Gingrich woke up to find that they had just won control of both houses of Congress.
Mr. Clinton's presidency, however, did recover. And though the Republican revolution in Congress would ultimately run aground, in retrospect we can see two important legacies: It helped usher in a new era of prosperity for the American people, and in the process helped Mr. Clinton save his presidency.
Today the lesson that President Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress take from that 1994 defeat is that they need to avoid Mr. Clinton's "mistakes." Avoiding mistakes, however, is not a winning strategy. A far more productive strategy would be to embrace Mr. Clinton's success, which was freeing himself from his party's left and returning to the centrist themes he had campaigned on.
No doubt that would be a bitter pill for Mr. Obama, given how he has made health care his signature issue. Still, a wiser West Wing ought to have seen this train wreck coming. For months polls have shown a huge gap between the popularity of the president and the unpopularity of his policies. Sooner or later, one of these had to give.
Public skepticism increased when the Congressional Budget Office issued findings contradicting Mr. Obama's claims that his health-care reform would lower costs. And the more Americans have learned about the specifics, the more they dislike the plans. The president understands that he loses when he talks about substantive issues, which is why he's been fudging on the public option. He may not understand that he is closing the gap between his unpopular policies and his personal popularity in the worst way a president can: by reducing his own credibility.
Back in 19
94, Mr. Clinton faced pretty much the same problem. Though he too had won the White House promising to be a new kind of Democrat, his first two years had a distinctly liberal tenor: battling over gays in the military, promoting a new energy tax, turning a promised middle-class tax cut into a huge tax hike, and trying to push through universal health care. Though he continues to deny GOP contributions to his success, after his 1994 health-care defeat, Mr. Clinton did what all smart pols do: He appropriated the most appealing parts of his opponents' agenda.
The result was a new Bill Clinton, embracing everything from deregulation and welfare reform to the Defense of Marriage Act. In his 1996 State of the Union, he even struck a Reaganite chord by announcing that "the era of Big Government is over." From this newly held center, Mr. Clinton advanced his presidency and pushed, both successfully and unfairly, to demonize Mr. Gingrich. Mostly he got away with it.
In his book "The Pact," historian Steven M. Gillon puts it this way: "Ironically, Gingrich's revolution may have saved the Clinton presidency by freeing him from the control of his party's more liberal base in Congress, giving him the opportunity to return to the moderate message that helped him win election in the first place.
"It was Gingrich who changed the language of American politics and forced Clinton to play the game on his turf," he writes. "But it was Clinton who ultimately got the credit and emerged as the decade's most popular leader."
Even in the midst of a Republican resurgence, Mr. Clinton would go on from the defeat to become the first Democrat since FDR to be elected to two terms. By contrast, Mr. Obama's handling of the health-care debate—making villains out of cable television and insurance companies, questioning the motives of those who disagree, imposing artificial deadlines—suggests a rigidity typically associated with a lack of executive experience and responsibility.
At the moment, Mr. Obama plainly remains wedded to the view that the 1994 failure to get a health-care bill through Congress marked a catastrophe for the Clinton presidency rather than its liberation. On Friday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said his boss was "quite comfortable" with the idea that sticking to his agenda may well mean "he only lives in this house" for one term. Sounds like a man who appreciates the limits of a president's personal popularity.
As reported by the Associated Press today President Obama's approval rating is falling like a lead balloon. It seems clear that this can be attributed to his radical pro-abortion policies (which often differ from his words) and his currently failing attempt to cram a socialist health care plan down the throats of millions of Americans -- all who have a very strong and functioning gag reflex. His congressional cronies on the bleeding edge of liberalism throwing temper tantrums at local town hall meetings and referring to good willed Americans with opinions differing from their own as "un-American" and "Nazis" aren't doing a lot for his image or their own either.
Further damage to his image was inflicted on Obama by Obama himself just two days ago when he referred to the ninth commandment in the bible and stated that critics of his plan for health care reform where "bearing false witness". This statement was made on a "faith" conference call that obviously the nation's evangelicals would be paying attention to. It's not to difficult to see that this statement was directed at those evangelicals who are concerned about tax funded abortion, something the President continues to insist won't happen under his plan. But without specifically stating that no public funds are to be used for elective abortions (as has been suggested over and over) what is to keep the funds from being used this way? To quote not the bible but instead a popular modern western "it appears his hypocrisy knows no bounds."
President Obama has enjoyed a celebrity like status from the beginning of his presidential campaign. He gained that status thanks to a more than helpful left leaning media, his charming demeanor, and eloquent words, as long as a functioning tele-promtper was nearby. But slick words and an engaging smile can only get you so far.
The American people expect, need, and demand performance and credible leadership from their commander in chief. Unfortunately, it seems that instead the American people have received a winsome actor with a charming personality (sort of) who is more intent on imposing his own socialist political agenda on the people rather than serving according to the will of the people.
At one time the United States had an actor turned president; Ronald Reagan was an incredible president who brought us together as a nation and accomplished great things. Who knows, perhaps Obama has a great career ahead of him in Hollywood, his skill set would suggest it's a strong possibility.
All of this being said it certainly doesn't seem to early to start thinking -- or rather dreaming, about the 2012 elections and having the opportunity to vote for something other than just "change" -- perhaps next time we will have the opportunity to vote for "change for the better."
Responding to the direction of the Obama administration, the U.S. Census Bureau released guidelines Monday indicating that they will now begin reporting data on same-sex "marriage."Due to the late decision, the 2010 Census will operate according to previous policy, with Census software recoding relationship status entries for same-sex partners who identify themselves as "husband or wife," to "unmarried partner." In late 2011, however, Census officials will, for the first time, release raw state-by-state data on same-sex partners who identify themselves as "husband or wife."
The Bush administration had prohibited the release of such data based on their interpretation of the 1996 Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA); but in a legal opinion published last week, Commerce Department lawyers disagreed, concluding that DOMA does not prohibit the release of data relating to same-sex "marriage."
The Census Bureau has slowly adapted its data collection to an American culture that is increasingly dominated by the homosexualist agenda. In the 1990 Census, the Bureau resolved the problem of same-sex partners identifying their relationship status as "husband or wife" by 'editing' the gender of one of the partners. In 2000, however, such entries were recoded to "unmarried partners."
The Bureau will first report on same-sex "marriage" data later this year in its release of the 2008 American Community Survey, which will include unedited responses about relationship status.
Gov. Sarah Palin has signed a joint resolution declaring Alaska's sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution – and now 36 other states have introduced similar resolutions as part of a growing resistance to the federal government.
Just weeks before she plans to step down from her position as Alaska governor, Palin signed House Joint Resolution 27, sponsored by state Rep. Mike Kelly on July 10, according to a Tenth Amendment Center report. The resolution "claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States."
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