National Review Online: A Rookie President

From the National Review Online:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODk5M2I3YWI2NTU2ZGZjZDBjMGVjNTVkZGQwNWI5ZTg=

A Rookie President

By Thomas Sowell

Someone once said that, for every rookie you have on your starting team in the National Football League, you will lose a game. Somewhere, at some time during the season, a rookie will make a mistake that will cost you a game.

We now have a rookie president of the United States, and, in the dangerous world we live in, with terrorist nations going nuclear, just one rookie mistake can bring disaster down on this generation and generations yet to come.

Barack Obama is a rookie in a sense that few other presidents in American history have ever been. It is not just that he has never been president before. He has never had any position in any kind of organization where he was personally responsible for the outcome.

Other first-term presidents have been governors, generals, Cabinet members, or others in positions of personal responsibility. A few have been senators, like Barack Obama, but usually for longer than Obama, and not having spent half their few years in the Senate running for president.

What is even worse than making mistakes is having sycophants telling you that you are doing fine when you are not. In addition to all the usual hangers-on and supplicants for government favors that every president has, Barack Obama has a media that will see no evil, hear no evil, and certainly speak no evil.

They will cheer him on, no matter what he does, short of first-degree murder — and they would make excuses for that. Even Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan has gushed over President Obama, and even crusty Bill O’Reilly has been impressed by Obama’s demeanor.

There is no sign that President Obama has impressed the Russians, the Iranians, or the North Koreans, except by his rookie mistakes — and that is a dangerous way to impress dangerous people.

What did his televised overture to the Iranians accomplish, except to reassure them that he was not going to do a damn thing to stop them from getting a nuclear bomb? It is a mistake that can go ringing down the corridors of history.

Future generations who live in the shadow of that nuclear threat may wonder what we were thinking about, putting our lives — and theirs — in the hands of a rookie because we liked his style and symbolism?

In the name of “change,” Barack Obama is following policies so old that this generation has never heard of them — certainly not in most of our educational institutions, where history has been replaced by “social studies” or other politically correct courses.

Seeking deals with our adversaries, behind the backs of our allies? The French did that at Munich back in 1938. They threw Czechoslovakia to the wolves and, less than two years later, Hitler gobbled up France anyway.

This year, President Obama’s attempt to make a backdoor deal with the Russians, behind the backs of the NATO countries, was not only rejected but made public by the Russians — a sign of contempt and a warning to our allies not to put too much trust in the United States.

Barack Obama is following a long practice among those on the left of being hard on our allies and soft on our enemies. One of our few allies in the Middle East, the Shah of Iran, was a whipping boy for many in the American media, who vented their indignation at his regime — which now, in retrospect, seems almost benign compared to the hate-filled fanatics and international-terrorism sponsors who now rule that country.

However much Barack Obama has proclaimed his support for Israel, his first phone call as president of the United States was to Hamas, to which he has given hundreds of millions of dollars, which can buy a lot of rockets to fire into Israel.

Our oldest and staunchest ally, Britain, has been downgraded by President Obama’s visibly unimpressive reception of British prime minister Gordon Brown, compared to the way that previous presidents over the past two generations have received British prime ministers. President Obama’s sending the bust of Winston Churchill from the White House back to the British embassy at about the same time was either a rookie mistake or another snub.

We can lose some very big games with this rookie.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

© 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

IBD Editorial: Reordering Begins

From Investors Business Daily:

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=323390743506745

Reordering Begins

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, March 31, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Regulation: Democrat-controlled Washington has rebranded the war on terror as an “Overseas Contingency Operation.” That conflict, a life-and-death struggle, has been replaced with a war on business.

Read More: Business & Regulation

The House Financial Services Committee, under the direction of Democratic Chairman Barney Frank, isn’t content with the White House’s proposal to cap the pay of executives beyond those whose companies took bailout cash.

It wants to control the pay of every employee of any financial institution that has “received or receives a capital investment” from the federal government under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, last year’s $700 billion bailout.

The Pay for Performance Act of 2009 was approved 38-22 by the Financial Services Committee last week with only two Republicans, Reps. Ed Royce of California and Walter Jones of North Carolina, in support. Should the bill get by Congress — the full House is expected to vote on it this week — and receive the president’s signature, it will “prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards.”

And who decides what is “unreasonable” and “excessive?” The unelected secretary of the Treasury, in this case Timothy Geithner, who has neither inspired confidence nor demonstrated good judgment during a time of economic turmoil.

That is far too much authority to place in one man’s hands, and it is grossly inconsistent with representative government. In our system, government officials are servants of the people and the protectors of their rights, not their masters.

Capping pay has a populist appeal. But it has no practical benefits. What are the incentives for the brightest workers, from the lowest management level to the executive offices, to fix their companies if there is little or no monetary reward for doing so?

Yes, saving a business from bankruptcy or from being liquidated are goals worth working for. But those are small consolations compared to the prize of restoring a company’s financial health, reputation and market share.

Americans expect to work under conditions that will reward their achievements. If they can’t find that environment here, they will be tempted to go outside our borders.

That wouldn’t stimulate the U.S. economy, but we bet the nations that have for decades lost their most brilliant workers to the U.S. and its mostly free market would be happy to get those people back, as well as a good portion of American brainpower looking to escape the iron hand of the U.S. Treasury secretary.

Too many in Washington, driven by wealth envy and their dream of dismantling our capitalist system, have been waiting for a chance to reorder America. With the economy still struggling, they have that opportunity now and they will milk it as radically and as tirelessly as they are able. Supervising pay is merely one of the first waves of change.

What they will produce, if left alone, will not be the leader of global commerce, but an ossified economy run by policymakers and bureaucrats who will make decisions based on politics.

The market process that promotes freedom and has provided the foundation for nearly all human advancement will be regarded as a cruel and archaic notion, favored only by retrogrades who want to turn back the clock.

Capitalism, though, is forward-looking, unlike the war on business, which will yield a world in which we all have to make do with less. Except for, of course, the grand planners behind the reordering. They’ll always live by another set of rules.