Hostage Taking Cannot Fail, It Can Only Be Failed...

The Shutdown Showdown of 2013 is kicking into third gear as I type this, and it ain't pretty.

From The National Review and thence to other news sources like ThinkProgress, the GOP House leadership has crafted a list of demands for Obama and the Democratic Senate leadership to surrender to:

As the nation moves dangerously close to a government shutdown on Oct. 1, House leaders are shifting their focus to the next big fiscal fight: raising the nation’s $16.7 trillion borrowing limit by one year before Oct. 17. On Wednesday night, Republicans circulated an outline of demands, threatening to push the nation into default unless President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate agree to enact a wish list of Republican priorities.

Though Obama has repeatedly insisted that he would not negotiate over the must-pass legislation, leadership is hoping to satisfy conservative members by including every “major piece of the Republican agenda” save a “ban on late-term abortions — and some lawmakers who oppose abortion were arguing to add that,” the Washington Post reports...

Igor Volsky's ThinkProgress article - alongside Derek Thomspon's over at The Atlantic - proceeded to break down the demands, which I can summarize here as well:

1. Delay Obamacare by one year.  Rather than defund or eliminate outright, the Republicans would at least want Obamacare stopped from being enacted before more Americans find out the health care reforms might actually work.  At least until the 2014 midterms, during which the Tea Party candidates can indulge in more fear-mongering to scare up votes and campaign moneys.  Meanwhile, the delay will cut into elements of Obamacare that have already kicked in, causing even more confusion.
2. Weaken/defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Created as a response to the massive fraud that led to the 2007 Economic Crisis / Great Recession, the CFPB is a bogeyman agency for the Far Right who prefer to deregulate everything and let the uber-rich banks defraud everyone until there's another need for a massive bank bailout.
3. Approval to build the Keystone Pipeline.  This is a pet issue for Republicans who view this as "more oil more money" kind of thing as their energy platform (drill baby drill).  This also includes letting the Coal industry and offshore drilling companies getting everything they want.
4. Enact the budget and tax plan created by Paul Ryan.  It's basically the plan he campaigned for as Romney's Veep partner, and it basically disqualifies the fact that a majority of Americans voted against it by voting against Romney/Ryan.  Plus the simple fact the Ryan budget is evil.
5. Cut funding to health care and social safety net programs, and enact a method of "means testing" Medicare (what is "means testing"?  It's where they test a person's eligibility for Medicare, and the GOP can be mean about it.).  Means testing, my ass: Republicans want any excuse to cut people off Medicare, they just want to cover up what they're actually doing by hiding behind Orwellian wording.
6. Massive cuts to the federal employee pension fund.  Considering the massive number of people reaching retirement age, this is bound to not work out well.
7. Block recent federal regulations capping greenhouse gases.  Because we all know that greenhouse gases are vital to the functioning of our proud country.
8. Tort reform.  Like it was the lawyers' fault doctors commit malpractice or corporations commit fraud/failed safety standards.
9. Passing the Republicans' ideas of "jobs bills"... which are A) cutting safety regulations everywhere and with little to no evidence ending those regs would create more jobs, and B) massive tax cuts to corporations that won't require those tax savings go to actual job creation or wage growth.

I'm with Andrew Sullivan on this: "why not ask for Obama's resignation while they're at it?"

What the sheer gob-smacking scale of these demands means is that the GOP effectively wants to nullify the last election entirely (except of course for their gerrymandered, no-popular vote House majority). The staggering thing about this party as it now exists is that it views the governance of the other party as always effectively illegitimate. Elections do not matter. Only their agenda matters. No compromise is possible, even when this kind of catastrophic default is hanging over our heads. In fact, the danger of catastrophic default is something they relish in order to undo the basic principles of democratic government.

This is not a bargaining position; they already voted for the budget that requires us to raise the debt ceiling. It is a bald attempt to reverse elections as the mark of a democracy and replace them with endless blackmail until they get their way. This isn't conservatism. It’s pure constitutional vandalism...

Sullivan later makes a question about American history where a party in the minority made such an egregious list of demands... and he quickly got an answer from readers who pointed out that yes this has happened before.  Back in 1860, when the Republicans were poised to elect Lincoln into the White House, the slavery-owner leadership of the Southern Democrats faction threatened secession unless Lincoln caved on all demands.  And when it became clear the South had little to threaten with, they seceded and forced the civil war (anyone calling it a War of Northern Aggression is selling you snake oil.  The South wanted a fight and by God they got one).

It shouldn't be a surprise that the end result of Nixon's Southern Strategy would have the southern conservative agenda seek another go at wrecking the nation.  We shouldn't be at all surprised that the Far Right - in the House, Senate, and wingnut media - want push this issue well over the cliff (no matter how much the party's own leadership is aware of the disaster that awaits them).  Their way or the highway.

This "negotiation" over the debt ceiling and the budget by having the Republicans demand this "We Get Everything WE Want" wish list is in my mind akin to a bank robber taking hostages during a heist... and then demanding that not only the cops let him go with all the cash from that bank, but that the cops help him rob three or four more banks right down the road because dammit he's in the right.  That's not negotiating.  That's not even practical hostage-taking.  That's batshit insanity. (pardon my Swedish)

There is no reason for Obama or Reid to answer this list at all.  The Republicans can scream all they want about who to blame when the debt ceiling crisis reaches the Defcon-1 level.  Insisting the majority party enact the worst elements of the minority party's agenda isn't democracy, isn't republican, and isn't sane.

And the polls are reflecting that, yes Americans know exactly who to blame if the shit goes down.

I want every voter to remember this by November 2014: The Republicans do not care to compromise, they do not care to govern, they do not care period.  They want it all.

Please for the love of God vote them out.

Indulging In a Little Fantasy Here

The thing about sitting on the outside looking in, to be honest, is that this makes you a critic.

It's easy to sit on the sidelines and complain about the stupid moves your football team makes.  To be fair, today for the Tampa Bay Bucs was a stupid "why the hell did you waste everyone's time with this crap" day.  Anyway.  It's easy to look at the political circus inside the Beltway and go "What.  The.  F-CK."  Criticizing is easy: you just point and mock.

But there's gotta be something more than that.  Mockery doesn't do much other than generate laughs and make the targets unhappy, if they even care about your opinion.  The best type of critique is the constructive critique: recognizing an honest attempt and building on it, noting a flaw that can be fixed and suggesting how that fix can be made.

When I started this blog 499 posts ago, it was designed to be a place to provide something constructive: suggested amendment ideas that would reform the flaws in government and law that had been weakening our system and letting things fall apart.  Of course, things being what they were this place quickly revolved around the "things p-ssing me off" at the state, national and global level to where I changed the title and intent.  (That was Post 400, just in April of this year.  I'd been blogging like crazy since then... )

But I'd like to think I can still do some constructive work here.  Something of importance.  Something that could get a dialogue going.  Something to stroke the ego... wait no, even better the SUPEREGO!  ...what do you mean, I've gotten that confused with my Id?  Dammit...

So, here now, if you can indulge in my fantasies a little bit, is Post 500:

Let's just say, just humor me for a moment here, that on Nov. 8, 2016, through no fault of my own I'm able to convince 60 million of my fellow Americans with enough Electoral pull into voting for me as the 45th President of the United States.  In a three-way race between myself, Democratic Martin O'Malley, and Republican Rick Santorum 60 million would be more than enough to win the popular vote (O'Malley having earned the Dem nomination when Hillary Clinton bowed out to health issues and Santorum surviving a brutal 50-way primary fight between every Tea Partier rabblerouser on the circuit), and the Electoral count for me getting Florida as a Favored Crazy Resident, winning over moderates in the Midwest states, and a surprise win in California when my roast of Kevin Smith turns into a laugh riot highlight of the year (O'Malley comes in second with key wins for Texas and New York, Santorum a distant third getting only South Carolina and Mississippi).

If I've won over 60 million voters I'd like to think it was because of my key platform position of Jobs Jobs and JOBS.  Hell, this would be my bumper sticker:

I admit I will need a graphics design office when I campaign...

Our economy is still weak on job creation.  It's even worse when it comes to fair, affordable wages.  Unless there's a massive turnaround with a jobs stimulus bill between now and 2016, the need for "Good Jobs at Good Wages" is going to be high.

That blue line is CEO pay.  See those flat lines at the bottom?  That the minimum wage and also workers' wages.

With regards to other platform issues I'd run on, it'd mostly be the amendment ideas I've been hawking over the years, with a focus on making Congress more accountable to their ethical requirements (i.e. STOP LYING) and a focus on ensuring fair regulation of businesses to ensure workplace safety and consumer protection.  I'd have a foreign policy platform of diplomacy over military action, a domestic program to reform the NSA to require more stringent warrants and strict oversight, and a requirement to stop Hollywood from making unnecessary movie remakes.  Seriously, we're at the point the studios are going to remake a movie released two months ago...

Can I get any of my platform enacted by a Congress riven by partisan strife?  Sure.  Of course.  Dear reader, please note: this is my fantasy.  Let me indulge in the belief that I would march right into the halls of Congress and get every critter in office fainting over my mere presence.  With my State of the Union speech in hand, I will parade before the nation and say for all to know... (gets shouted down by wingnuts crying all "Liar!" "Socialist Fascist HitlerStalin!" "Smelly pants!" "Booooooggggggeerrrrrrrrrrrrr...")

Wow.  Even in my fantasy, they're not gonna let me get a word in...

What say you, people?  Do I have a shot in 2016? Anybody?

How It Came To This, A Government Shutdown

Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain on the mountains. Like wind in the meadow. The days have gone down in the west. Behind the hills, into shadow. How did it come to this? - JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

It hasn't yet come to pass, but the inevitability of a government shutdown is as certain as a sunrise on October 1st.

The damage of another shutdown, similar to the ones we had in 1995 and 1996, are pretty clear: lost earnings reaching into the billions, petty inconveniences to average Americans, loss of confidence in the governance of the nation.  The stock market as always is worried and at risk.

Shutdowns are serious business.  The results of the previous ones didn't go so great for the party that pushed for them: the Republicans ended up getting the blame, failed to achieve much of what they wanted, and made Bill Clinton look good for his re-election in 1996.  The more recent shutdown threat in 2011 over the debt ceiling tanked Congress' polling numbers from which it has yet to recover.  And the polls are showing that a majority of Americans don't want a government shutdown, and will blame the Republicans if one takes place.

And yet, here we are.  The Republicans - and no matter how they try the blame game on Democrats ("If only the Democrats would compromise on everything we want like tax cuts and defunding Obamacare and infinite military spending...!") - are pushing for this showdown.

How did it come to this?

An interesting reason is that a sizable number of the Republican voting base want a shutdown in the first place.  There's that strain of uber-libertarianism that doesn't so much want "small" government as it wants NO government: full deregulation, no taxes, free reign on finance and do-what-thou-will will be the Law of the Land.  A kind of conservative variation of anarchism that would make Randians weep for joy and a majority of Americans weep in pain.  The faction of the GOP that wants to prove government is ineffective and will happily crash it over a cliff to prove it.

The other faction of that Far Right voting base isn't as extreme as that, but are convinced that the threat of a shutdown - if not the shutdown itself - will force the Democrats to defund Obamacare.  These are the voters who have been told since 2009 about how Obama isn't really the President, that Obama is a socialist fascist fake American, that he's imposing Sharia law and taking our guns (personally, in the dead of night, through 10 miles of snow, uphill, both ways), and that above all Obama's signature health care reform law is unconstitutional and full of death panels.  Having been told for four straight years, these are the people who wholeheartedly believe Obamacare is outright evil... and that you don't compromise over evil...

But it's not just the base.  This is an action being pursued by the elected officials in the GOP-led House - not so much in the Senate, where Ted "All About Me" Cruz is the biggest thumper on the showdown - who have sold themselves as liberators of the Right and have obsessed themselves over eliminating Obamacare at all hazards.  Up to and including the fact that they've voted 41 times now to overturn, kill, or defund Obamacare and yet never find the time to pass a jobs bill for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.  These are the elected officials who are on a singular mission: make Obama a failed President.  They couldn't succeed making him a one-termer, but now they're aiming for the next best thing: force Obama to reject his own signature achievement in office.

Another reason the GOP leadership do not seem so concerned about the fallout from pursuing a government shutdown is that in practical terms it didn't cost the Republican Congress of 1995-96 all that much.  They only lost a handful of seats in the House and gained a couple seats in the Senate that election cycle (the only real loss was making Clinton look good enough to win re-election).

The failing of that logic is that for starters this isn't 1996: in 1996 the economy was booming behind the Internet Tech bubble; in 2013 the economy is still in a recession of failed wage growth and wobbly housing values.  Also, in 1995 and 1996 Congress was functional enough to have passed spending and appropriations that kept much of government functioning quite well during the shutdowns: in 2013, this Congress hasn't passed or agreed to much of anything and is in fact mired in a sequester cutting program that has left government dysfunctional.  A shutdown today would be a disaster, and the GOP doesn't see it.

What does concern the GOP leadership is that voting base they've stirred up the past four years.  Placating the base is far more important to them than actual governance.  For all the reality of incumbents enjoying near-certain re-election wins in general elections, those incumbents are terrified of facing primary challenges.  Say hello to one of the major costs of gerrymandering: outside of the fact that gerrymandering creates wasted votes, these specially-crafted congressional districts are designed so that the party candidate of that district is favored to win no matter what (almost).  The big reason the Republicans held onto the House in 2012 wasn't because of their popularity: it was due to having crafted enough gerrymandered districts to maintain control.  But while it was good for the party in 2012, it's bad for the Republicans in 2014 because the gerrymanders don't stop primaries.

The Far Right base - the Tea Partier faction - is stirred up and angry... and utterly convinced that if "their" elected officials so much as blink towards a compromise with hated Obama, they'll put up an even Further Right wingnut as a challenger.  And the nature of a primary fight is "who can pander the most to the voting base who turns out": primary elections are poorly attended by moderate (aka sensible) party members, and so candidates veer sharply to their base (Dems to their Left, GOP to their Right).  An incumbent could win a general election but before that happens he/she can seriously lose a primary to a more extreme opponent: it has happened before.  The RINO party purge hasn't finished yet: it's even going after incumbents who had purged out RINOs three or four election cycles ago.  And if the extremist candidate replacement is extreme enough, the Republicans could lose what would have been an easy gerrymandered (or Red State) win.

So this is how we got here.  A political party in the Republicans who have been for decades purging out more moderate party leaders until a more partisan faction is in control... and yet the mechanisms they used for those purges are still in place and eagerly purging out the partisans for even worse extremists.  Now fearing their base as much as they pander to it, the Republicans have to pursue an obsessive agenda - defund Obamacare or otherwise make Obama concede to Far Right policy - at all hazards, up to and including a government shutdown and economic crisis for which they'll be blamed and which for most reasons will have far greater repercussions in 2014 than previous shutdowns had in 1996.

And this is all on top of the House GOP voting on a Food Stamps defunding bill that cuts $39 billion in aid to starving families.  Basically an open act of sadism that hurts more poor whites than it does any minority group.  It's like the Republicans WANT to commit political suicide.  Who's gonna be left voting for Republicans by 2014?



 

More Notes From The Sunshine State Asylum, AKA Post 498

This is my 498th post on this blog site (formerly Amendments We Need, now You Might Notice A Trend), so in 2 blog entries from now I'm gonna have an epic blog of total epicness that will be, um, epic.  Please keep an eye on this blog.  Until then you get this update:

Former candidate Alex Sink has decided not to run again for the 2014 Florida governorship.

...Sink's decision not to run was widely expected in Florida political circles, as she showed little sign of putting together a campaign and was up front about her ambivalence and her family's opposition. But until Friday, the former Bank of America leader and former state chief financial officer continued to keep the door open and several times pushed back her deadline for announcing a decision...

...Sink lost to Rick Scott by just over 1 percentage point in 2010, despite being outspent dramatically and facing a Republican tidal wave across the country. Still, many Democrats complained that Sink ran an anemic, excessively cautious campaign against a weak Republican who had run a company that paid the largest fine in U.S. history for Medicare fraud...

This basically leaves the way open for Charlie Crist, former (relatively sane) Republican turned (hopefully still sane) Democrat in the wake of the wingnut-ification of the GOP.  While Crist has his critics even among his now Democratic allies (primarily that he's an opportunist), few can criticize his campaign skills.  Crist left the governor's office under relatively popular terms: the only ones who hated him were the hard-line Republicans who felt betrayed when he fled the party in 2010 when the state organization turned far right.

Crist's polling numbers into this year are pretty solid against Rick "F-ck The State" Scott.  If there had been a primary challenge between Crist, Sink, Nan Rich (so far the only other candidate in the race, but failing to raise interest or funds to keep up) and the others, Crist would have won but the primary process would have been brutal considering the left wing base of the Democrats won't trust him.  A majority of Democrats seem to be backing Crist primarily because moderates and disgruntled former Republicans like Crist, and the primary objective - get rid of Scott - is something a majority of Floridians can get behind.

The Floods Of Colorado

This was something that hit Disaster stages days ago.  Colorado got hit with a weather system of massive rainfall, combined with previous years of drought (killing off trees to adsorb the water, loosening ground that turned into mud) turning northern parts of the state into a massive and deadly flood zone.  Aging and un-repaired dams broke and added to the chaos.

The news channels seem to be ignoring it.  CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC don't have it anywhere near their main stories slot.  Fox Not-News is focusing on the GOP plan to defund Obamacare.

It doesn't help that there's been a major shooting again, leaving victims in its wake that we need to remember.  Nor that Syria and Iran are dominating the international focus.  It's really not helping that the government is facing another shutdown vote by the House GOP.

But in the meantime Colorado is getting hit with a major crisis.  Please try to pay attention.

Also, if anyone can help a Coloradan out...

In the Navy Yard Shooting, These Are the Facts You Need To Know

Today was a bad day all around - even without considering the flooding disaster that is Colorado - when we found our nation handling yet another shooting spree... this time at a well-guarded Washington DC Navy Yard.

These are the facts as can be confirmed (EDIT 9/26/13, I feel the need to add a little more for those Google searchers pulling up this article, SEE BELOW):

1) Early reports of multiple shooters proved wrong, as usual: there's always confusion during these mass shooting incidents, with survivors and eyewitnesses confused about where and when the violence takes place.  There was just one guy.

2) The shooter brought with him just a shotgun, but used the fact he was shooting up a military installation to secure additional firearms - handgun and rifle - to continue the shootout.

3) The shooter had his own access card to the grounds.  Working for a private tech firm supporting the Navy Yard, he would need some form of access to get into work areas as part of his job.

4) The shooter was involved in a previous shooting incident in 2010 when he lived in Texas, when he was charged with shooting a gun he claimed he was cleaning when it accidentally went off.  Those charges were dropped.  He was also charged in 2004 shooting out a car's tires in Seattle.

5) The shooter had a background as a military reservist from 2007 to 2011 when he was discharged.

6) There are reports that the shooter had undergone - and maybe still undergoing - psychological treatment for sleep issues and anger management.

7) The shooter was African-American.
7a) The identities of the victims have not been established yet.  The authorities are most likely talking to victims' families first.
UPDATE: The identities were released to the public, Washington Post created a memorial site.  By the looks of it the shooter did not discriminate, he shot at White, Black, Hindu Indian, male, female.  Most of the victims were middle-aged or near retirement age.

8) There are currently 13 dead, with 8 wounded.

These are the speculations:

1) Would the current needs for universal background checks as supported by a broad majority of Americans stopped the shooter from getting a firearm?  Probably not in this case: since that Texas gun charge was dropped it wouldn't have shown up on the background check.  And I'm not sure if the 2004 charges would have expired otherwise, or if the psychological treatment would have been a red flag under the rules.

2) Would the shooting have been less tragic if there were more people at the workplace with firearms / conceal permits?  You have to be kidding: this was the Navy Yard.  There's supposed to be armed guards, fences, barricades, defensive systems across the place.  And yet I won't be surprised if we're gonna get gun enthusiasts arguing for conceal-carry and more gun permissiveness at a military base (again: they said this crap after the Fort Hood shootings).
UPDATE: This did not stop LaPierre of the NRA from declaring the shooting wouldn't have been as bad if there had been more "Good guys with guns," the blanket NRA excuse against sensible gun safety laws.  Never mind the fact that there were armed guards on the site, the cops responded within 2 minutes, never mind the possibility of a "good guy with a gun" getting confused at who to shoot, and then having the cops shoot at him thinking he might be a second shooter (refer back to the earlier point of the reports of multiple gunmen).

3) What motivated the shooting?  The shooter did not leave behind any obvious clue like a letter or a death threat on a website.  There is no evidence as of yet what triggered the shooting.  (any further speculation based on race would really be in poor taste until we get specifics)
UPDATE: Huff Post has an article that the shooter left a note, indicating the shooting was a twisted case of a mental breakdown.

4) The shooter is someone with a serious track record of gun ownership.  This was not an overnight impulse to buy a gun and shoot up someplace: he's had guns before.  And he's used guns before...

5) The more obvious point about the shooter is the anger management (lack of).  A huge red flag in any shooting spree.  Any kind of terror attack, really.  The patterns still all point to one thing: an angry guy lashing out at a supposed injustice and taking it out on a lot of people who had nothing to do with causing that anger.  Mostly the shooter is an angry white guy, but we've had angry black guys as shooters before, there's been angry Asian guys, there's been angry ethnic guys across the board.

But the common link is there: Anger.  There are a lot of gun owners in the United States, I will grant you that.  Most of them never pull the trigger outside of legal usage such as practice ranges and/or licensed hunting.  But you get the gun owner with the persecution complex, the rage against women/the job/next door neighbor who leaves the flood lights on.  It's the combination of rage and access to firearms that ought to be of concern.

It'd be nice to have a debate on the matter, on the problem of guns and anger.  But David Frum is right: we're never going to get a debate on guns at all anymore, are we...?
UPDATE: Still don't have a serious debate on gun safety.

Presidential Character: Week Thirty-Two, The Two Faces Part Two

This is the follow-up to the first parter posted earlier.

Previously, on Presidential Character:
"Cut the red wire!  Cut it!"
"You don't go telling me how to stop a madman!  I'm the only one who thinks like he does!  Don't stop me here!  Or we're ALL DEAD!"
"The car's going over the cliff!  JUMP!"
"Are you telling me I'm the father?  I'M THE FATHER?"
"Mr. Worf.  FIRE..."
"Who ordered the pizza?" (explodes)

...what, had to be done.

By 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt had served two full terms and by tradition was expected to "retire" from the Presidency to allow another candidate - Democrat or Republican by this point in the two-party system - the chance to lead.  But 1940 wasn't a normal year by any measure.

There was another world war.  Less than a generation after the Great War that Wilson sought to be the last.  And unlike the last war which focused mostly on Europe and the Middle East, this was truly a world war: Germany razing across Europe, Italy flailing across the Mediterranean and Africa, Japan marching across China and Asia.  And in most respects it wasn't the good guys winning the battlefields.  You had the fascists of Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy turning Europe into dictator-held hell, and the militaristic Japan leaving massacres in their wake in China.

While the trauma of the Great Depression was still affecting the United States, it was expected that the next President would either continue Roosevelt's work or the Republican come in on his own agenda.  In that regards there was no reason for Roosevelt to try for a third term.  He could have easily picked a successor from his administration who shared his goals and moved on. 

Why did Roosevelt go for a third term?

The official reason was World War II, and the fact that Roosevelt and most of the Democratic Party leadership did not trust the Republicans (who as a party were leaning Isolationist even against Great Britain) to do the right thing.  And their polling was telling the leadership that FDR was the surest way to keep the Republicans out of the White House.

But here's the truth.  A lot of it had to do with FDR's Active-Positive traits.  In certain personalities it leads to a kind of recklessness where tradition and expectations take a backseat.  Any other character trait in the office at that point in time - especially a Negative - would have stuck to tradition.  A Passive-Positive might have been talked into it, but only if there were no other voices in the party threatening to rock the boat.

While the 1940 election still went for FDR, there were now the present worries about the war storm.  The United States had remained neutral but the pressures to get involved were enormous.  The nation remained divided over the issues and with a strong pro-Bundist movement supporting Germany alongside the isolationists there was little FDR could do to help England, standing alone (at the time) against the German juggernaut.

FDR got around it with a Lend-Lease program that still upset the isolationists but basically avoided direct involvement in the war.  With regards to what was going on in the Pacific, there wasn't much the United States could do about Japan outside of boycotting and setting up oil embargoes to crimp Japan's war machinery.

In this, FDR shows the first face of the Active-Positive, thinking out solutions to achieve the long-term goal of being there for England when the United States would get dragged into the war (Nazi Germany's aggressiveness - seriously, going to war against the Soviets?  In WINTER? - made this a near certainty).  The Adaptive confidence of getting things done.

However, the reaction to the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7 1941 shows FDR's darker A-P habit of overreach.  With Japan aggressively attacking the United States, the fear of the Pacific coast being vulnerable became a sudden possibility.  And with the fear of hidden saboteurs (one of the Nazis' best tricks was getting Fifth Columnist/Quislings to betray nations from the inside), Roosevelt went with one of the sorrier national security plans our nation signed off on.

We interred - basically imprisoned without evidence - 150,000 Japanese Americans, about 2/3rds of them full-fledged citizens. Wanna know how bad this was?  J. Edgar Hoover, himself a trampler of civil liberties, thought it was a bad idea.  This fear is usually something you see out of an Active-Negative?  Why did an Active-Positive sign off on it?

The Overreach that A-P Presidents indulge.  FDR had to be convinced this was something legal and legitimate, that it would settle the fears of residents on the West Coast, and at the time it had that effect.  But the long-term consequences were not, are not ever a consideration for A-Ps.  'Tis the pity, because in the long-term the nation had to pay reparations and had to recognize that it made the United States look hypocritical as an Arsenal of Democracy jailing innocent families and kids.

With regards to the management of the war effort overall, Roosevelt left it to the generals he could trust, and worked amicably with his major ally Winston Churchill from England.  He overtrusted Stalin too much, but that was more a matter of hindsight, and with Soviet Russia a needed ally to trap Hitler's Germany between two fronts it was necessary to make that deal with this particular devil.

By 1944 Roosevelt running for a fourth term was pretty much anticlimactic.  We were still in the war, the economy had finally been fixed by the massive wartime stimulus, and there wasn't any reason to throw the Democrats out of the White House.  The only big issue FDR had to worry about was his health.  He was clearly getting sicker and the leadership worried about the Vice Presidency (for probably the first time ever).  Disregarding the current Veep Wallace who was openly Far Left, they sought out the best likely replacement for FDR, someone recognized as a fervent New Deal supporter but also a solid war backer and personally incorruptable.

They went with some guy named Truman.

Next: Serving Crow Since 1948.

Presidential Character: Week Thirty-Two, The Two Faces of an Active-Positive Part One

Considering the length of this next President's tenure, and the fact that during his administration our nation was literally in two worlds - the first a massive economic crisis, the second a global war - I've decided to divide this one's entry into two articles.  Hopefully I'll be able to explain why...

My fading memories of AP American History remind me that one of the essay questions used was "Herbert Hoover was a liberal and Franklin D. Roosevelt a conservative, discuss."  In fact, a quick Google search showed me the question is still in use today.  I pity you high-schoolers.

The arguments made were that in practice Hoover the established pro-business Republican had done things considered "liberal" - increased taxes, expanded government - while Roosevelt the radical try-anything Democrat had done things "conservative" - cut taxes, gave business more free range.

The problem with that argument is sticking to the belief that "liberal" and "conservative" are static constructs.  The argument simplified what Hoover and FDR did on their own terms and under the legal and cultural restrictions of the day.  For one thing, a conservative (as politics usually define one) would never had unleashed the 1,001 different agendas that Roosevelt did throughout the New Deal era.  A liberal (as usually defined) would not have viewed government as limited in its authority which kept Hoover from fully resolving the crisis.

This is where viewing the Presidential Character as either Active-Passive and Positive-Negative makes more sense.  An Active-Positive like FDR would have cut taxes if the circumstances called for it, would have allowed more free trade if it made the economy work, would have done things that a modern-era Republican think paradoxically "Reagan did it first".  It's neither truly liberal or truly conservative.  It's Adaptive: the key trait of the A-P President.

FDR came into office at one of the greatest crises in American history.  The Great Depression had become a perfect storm of failing banks, mass unemployment, and financial ineptitude on a scale that would have - and did in Europe - collapsed powerful nations since the days of olde.  The economic collapse had led to regime changes in Italy and Germany, allowing the rise of fascism as a political alternative to the democratic republicanism seemingly failing in the West.  Soviet communism had taken root in Russia and was under the control of one of history's most brutal dictators.  A lot was at stake with FDR's administration: failure didn't mean a One-Term Presidency, it most likely meant a mass riot and the fall of the federal government to one extreme or the other.  And Roosevelt knew it.

Roosevelt brought with him a team of advisors and Cabinet officials that represented the broad spectrum of the political ideology: some were noted die-hard conservatives, some were hard-case liberals one step removed from communism.  Ideology didn't mean much to FDR outside of results: get the economy working again.  He famously said during his 1932 campaign that the thing to do during the crisis was "to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." 

And his administration proved it: a greater number of bills presented to Congress over the first 100 days (the first time an administration measured its efforts by that metric) than had been presented by any previous administration.  Relief projects begun under Hoover supported with greater funding and urgency.  New regulations put in place - like Glass-Steagall - to stop the questionable and chaotic financial speculation that had led to financial collapse.  And the first of several government-backed employment programs under the Civilian Conservation Corps, which employed 250,000 young men to farms and conservation projects.

He did all this under withering criticism: from the Republican conservatives who questioned the budget deficits FDR was piling up and the constitutionality of much of the New Deal policies, and from the Far Left who questioned whether Roosevelt was doing enough in sharing the wealth and fixing everything in one broad stroke.  Both extremes noted that for all of the New Deal activity, the economy only barely improved by the end of Roosevelt's first term: Unemployment in particular was still in the double digits (14 percent) barely half of its 1933 high (24 percent).

FDR openly welcomed the hatred, especially from the rich elite that declared Roosevelt "a traitor to his class."  He plowed ahead on his New Deal, adding more projects and trying anything.  And some metrics of the economy were improving - Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was finally going upward after 1933 when during the 1929-32 period it had dropped - along with the nation's mood, well enough that when the 1936 Presidential campaign rolled around FDR won re-election in one of the biggest butt stompings in electoral history.

Professor Barber in his text notes why he uses Franklin D. as his model of the Active-Positive:

Roosevelt exhibited... what I see as a major contrast between the Active-Positive type in politics and other types... (they) are freer in their selections from a stylistic repertoire... (they) show how much richer and more varied range of emotional orientations is available to the politician whose character is firmly rooted in self-recognition and self-love.  The Active-Positive not only can perform lovingly or aggressively or with detachment, he can feel those ways.  As Roosevelt's case points out, the genuineness of those feelings can come across powerfully to close associations and to the public at large. (p. 295-6)

The empathy adds to the ability of being Adaptive.  Knowing what the situation is at one moment requires a response.  Realizing the situation can or has changed requires turning that response in a different direction, sometimes in a direction your supporters never saw on the horizon.  While other politicians can "flip-flop" on an issue for cynical reasons, the A-P personality has the confidence to express why the change was made and point out the empathetic reasons for doing so.  Above all is that Confidence: not the stolid "I Must" of an Active-Negative that Barber noted with Hoover, but the reckless "I Can".

But this shows one of the dangers - the second face - of the Active-Positive.  The danger of Overreach.  The "I Can Do This" in the most reckless of moments can be devastating to an A-P President.  Lincoln had that "I Can" feeling with his Emancipation Proclamation, a questionable edict that on the eve of the Civil War's end meant chaos unless the 13th Amendment could get passed.  Jefferson's "I Can" came not with the Louisiana Purchase but with the self-imposed trade embargoes as a response to the Napoleonic wars.

FDR's came with the Court Packing scheme.  Genuinely frustrated with a conservative Supreme Court that struck down some of the more impactful New Deal bills, Roosevelt figured at the start of his second term to use his political capital on a plan to give the President the power to add an extra SCOTUS Justice for every sitting Justice over the age of 70 (in 1937 that meant six new seats).

People outside and within Roosevelt's own administration freaked.  Some of the arguments FDR used in favor of the plan didn't make sense - one of Roosevelt's strongest supporters on the bench at the time was 80 years old for example, meaning age couldn't have been an issue - and the bill quickly got recognized even by New Deal advocates as a serious Executive branch threat to Judicial sovereignty.  Roosevelt may have had confidence in presenting the plan, but for once that famed A-P empathy failed to read the public mood.  Time, the unexpected loss of the legislative proponent to present the bill to Congress, and the changeover of the Supreme Court membership saved FDR the embarrassment of having the Court Packing bill reach a chamber floor and burn up in flames, but it quickly became the biggest failure of FDR's New Deal era.

FDR's two faces - the confident Adaptive leader, the Overreaching politico - would be combined into one  big reason why Roosevelt would eschew the tradition of letting go after two terms of office.  By 1940, there were problems on the national and international level that would stir the interest and challenge of any Active-Positive leader: the Second World War.

And that's where I'll leave off for Part Two. (link to be added later)

Next Up: What Did I Just Tell You?!  PART TWO DAMMIT.

Quick Notes From the Sunshine State Asylum

While I'm heading into Post #500 (this one will be #493), I feel the need to pass along a few good news, bad news, WTF news from the great state of Florida.

• The Miami-Dade government made a "last-minute" move to NOT make massive cuts into the county library system by pulling funds from a "rainy day" reserve.  This is good... for a year, at which point the issue of funding libraries will come back up again.  Hint to Miami-Dade: try a bond issue, it worked wonders in neighboring Broward County over a decade ago.
• Rick "F-ck Florida" Scott issued a directive this week to county health care offices that the "navigators" made available by Obamacare to assist state residents figure out their health care plans would not be able to perform such outreach in those health care offices.  Essentially making it harder for the navigators to do anything to help anyone.  There's already been push-back by one of the counties that's gotten direct funding to hire some navigators, but it's pretty clear Scott and his ilk are doing everything possible to obstruct the health care reform efforts.
• Speaking of Rick "Too Self-Serving To Know He's Being Dumb" Scott, he had a fundraiser scheduled in the form of a $25,000 per person alligator hunt.  The campaign had to quickly cancel it not just because of the suddenly intense media interest in the story but because it turns out that alligator hunting licenses were strictly limited and only gained by lottery system.  You'd think someone in his office would have Farking done some research on this.
• George Zimmerman is back in the news regarding a possible domestic violence incident with his separated-seeking-divorce wife.  There's been conflicting stories, a damaged iPad, and an exasperated sheriff quickly tired of Zimmerman's sh-t.  For anyone who had a betting pool on when Zimmerman was gonna snap and do something dumber and more violent, it looks like anyone with September or October of this very year is in line for the win.
• This joker - the one who burned a Quran and started a global riot in the process - was arrested this 9/11 anniversary time while he was en route to a Polk County park to set fire to 2999 more Qurans.  Turns out preachers gotta answer to secular law, and it's a felony to transport gasoline in improper containers.

Okay, so.  For the seven readers... well actually for the seventeen readers now that I've got some Crooks & Liars audience members... still keeping an eye on this site, any suggestions for Post #500?

Should The Legacy of 9/11 Be More War?

Today is another remembrance of 9/11/01.  On this day we remember that 2,000-plus people lost their lives to 19 idiots seeking glory in death, ordered by another group of idiots who hid in a cave and didn't have the balls to do the deed themselves.

Today we remember that we as a nation launched a war on Afghanistan where those idiots were hiding, protected by a fundamentalist Taliban regime.  Today we have to remember that we're still in Afghanistan fighting those Taliban forces who will most likely re-seize power the second we leave, which is pretty much what the cave idiots want out of us: perpetual war.

Today we remember that we as a nation got lied to by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney regarding Iraq: that Saddam was tied in with those cave idiots (that was a lie), that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (that was a lie), that Saddam was a threat to Middle East security (the 1991 Persian Gulf war neutered his forces), that felling Saddam would bring peace and democracy to the Middle East (Cheney and Co. wanted to put Chalabi on the throne and leave a puppet regime in place).

This last remembrance is key, because it's a very good reason why a vast majority of Americans do not want our nation under Obama to go starting another military action in the Middle East.  On this day, we're thinking about Syria as much as we're thinking about the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and Flight 93.

The Syrian civil war is one of the messiest results of the Arab Spring of two years prior (the collapses of Egypt and Libya over this summer are starting to get as bad).  We've got 2 million refugees across the borders and 4 million more displaced within Syria: a massive humanitarian disaster in the making.  Adding to the problem is that the current Assad regime isn't a friendly or humane government... and that a growing number of Syrian rebel forces are tied into the Al Qaeda cave idiot extremists, meaning the U.S. really doesn't have an honest side to back.

The biggest headache is how Assad's government does have WMDs in the form of chemical weapons.  While warfare is a bloody mess regardless what weapons are used, chemical warfare is a Big No-No: the risk to civilian exposure is the biggest worry, especially since there's little warning when the attacks come and there's not a lot of people going around with gas masks.  When the fighting got worse, but the U.S. had no reason or allied support to go in, Obama issued a stern warning (the "red line") that chemical weapon usage would cause reprisals.

Chemical weapons got used.

Forced to uphold the "red line", Obama did what every other President seeking military action would do: call on allies to back him up.  This time, however, our allies refused.  In a public display of rejection, the British Parliament voted against the call for support.  Going to the UN for a military airstrike - missile or aerial bombing - was out of the question with Syria's backer Russia nearly certain to veto any action.

This brought him back to the U.S. going to Congress to ask for a resolution (something Presidents are supposed to do, but because of constitutional question marks they avoid this step).  This was originally viewed as the one thing the Republicans would actually back Obama on... except now there's no guarantee as the House GOP obstruction game-plan (destroy Obamacare, destroy Obama, destroy the government, etc) is back in full effect.

The worrying thing is how the knee-jerk reaction comes so easy on this: the urge to use military force as the first step rather than the last.  There is this lingering paranoia among our political leaders that nobody wants to look "weak".  That nobody wants to be accountable when something goes wrong, except for when a military strike could go wrong, in which case the answer would be an escalation in the fighting.

The current situation - the possibility of a diplomatic solution to the chemical weapons, it won't stop the fighting but it will reduce the need for the world power(s) to get further entangled - provides some hope for the present and the future.  If the United States can get Russia to back the effort, if Russia can get Syria to sign onto the chemical warfare treaties limiting their use, if Syria honestly gives up control of those weapons to international (UN) observers...  For the first time in what seems like decades, we would have a diplomatic solution to a problem rather than a military one.

And wouldn't that be a better legacy Post-9/11 than yet another war?

How To Cut a Gordian Knot

Ever hear of Lateral Thinking?  It's a problem-solving method of using non-conventional or unorthodox means to solve an otherwise intractable problem.  Where logic fails, you apply some illogical method that most people wouldn't see coming.

An example would be the legend of Alexander the Great confronting the problem of the Gordian Knot.  Where most everyone else tried to physically untie the knot, Alexander cut it with his sword.  It may seem like cheating, but it wasn't against the rules.  It symbolized how Alexander would conquer Persia/Middle East with the sword.

A modern-day Gordian Knot is the whole Middle East itself: war-ravaged, divided, tribalistic... if there's been a solution to stopping the ongoing violence that has plagued the region since, well, ever, no one's found it yet.

Part of the problem is that each region has its own internal issues that forces external politics to react disproportionately... and reverberates against every other problematic nation within shouting (or shooting) distance.  You've got 20 Gordian Knots adding up to one big Knot... and there's not a big enough sword to cut them all, not all at once.

For the United States, tied into the Middle East due to our alliances to various nations in the region (Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya) - and our opposition to other nations such as Iran and Syria - we're coping with the disastrous civil war in Syria by trying to enforce the unenforceable.  Syria is one of the nations with a sizable chemical weapons stockpile, and there's been recent usage of chemical weapons that's killing/wounding hundreds of civilians caught in the cross-fire of the civil war.  Obama tried earlier to push a "red line" stance on the use of chemicals... but now that they've been used, Obama's finding himself in almost no position to enforce it.

The standard response to what's happened in Syria is a "surgical" or tactical strike against key Syrian government targets, usually buildings that we plan to have as few people in them as possible when the missiles/bombs hit.  However, this most likely won't discourage Assad or his allies: it may actually make them react in the worst way.

Troubling Obama is the fact that this time the United States doesn't have many allies lining up to back any such strike.  The British Parliament voted against it.  NATO (outside of France, who will only provide political cover and not much else) is reportedly not in favor either.  There hasn't been an attempt to take this to the UN for a resolution, since the odds are Russia (Syria's biggest ally) and China will not play along.  It's gotten to where the only way Obama can get any political cover for striking Syria is by taking this to Congress to get a vote on a "limited military action", which he's kinda supposed to do under the War Powers Act but is something most Presidents haven't done in what seems like ages (or at least since the first Persian Gulf War in 1991).

Worst of all: most Americans do not want to get involved in Syria.  And it's not just the Far Right population opposing Obama's stance on Syria simply on principle (of hating Obama).  And even in the face of the growing humanitarian disaster that is the refugee crisis.  We've been burned out by 10-plus years of unending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Getting lied to by Cheney and Bush the Lesser about Saddam's WMDs is affecting the national mood.  If Congress votes No on Syria - and after my earlier contention that Congress might go along, there's signs now that the Far Right might not give Obama this - Obama will have no political cover to push for a strike.  He could still order it - the War Powers has yet to be constitutionally upheld, and it's in a grey area at best - but Obama would be held responsible on both the national and international stage for ignoring the people he's supposed to represent... and would be violating national laws he's supposed to uphold.

This is where Obama would be looking for a third option... an alternative solution to cut the Gordian Knot he's just tied himself into.

Who would have thought it would be diplomacy and NOT the sword that might actually solve the problem?

Secretary of State Kerry seemingly threw out there during a meeting with the UK Foreign Office the possibility that if Russia could talk Syria into giving up control of their chemical weapon stockpiles to international observers (UN most likely), it might resolve the issue and make a military strike moot.

When the State Department tried to talk back Kerry's statements, making it look like an off-the-record "gaffe" (wink wink), Russia's Foreign Minister quickly responded with favorable language, and Syria's foreign minister joined in.  This is kinda how Hollywood works when movie blockbusters have to be ironed out between supersized egos, I've been told.

If it turns into something that can get worked out between the key parties, the whole matter of chemical warfare - one of the Big No-Nos of fighting - could be taken out of the equation.

It won't resolve the civil war itself: Assad is fighting for his life, with his minority ethnic clan struggling alongside him, against a nationwide uprising against his family's brutal decades-long rule.  It will, however, get Obama and the United States out of a nasty political nightmare and give the major powers involved - Russia, US, France, Britain, Turkey and Iran - some room to maneuver regarding the Syrian disaster.

And who knows?  This diplomacy thing might catch on across the rest of the Middle East.  Trick is, of course, to make sure the goddamn killing stops first...

Presidential Character: Week Thirty-One, the Peter Principle Applied to Presidents

While this year-long attempt at documenting Presidents relies on James David Barber's seminal work Presidential Character, I do rely on the occasional outside reference to highlight a point.

For example, bringing up the Peter Principle.  To wit:

...in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence.

Now, an elective office like the Presidency doesn't work as a hierarchy.  As a rule, people are not hired and promoted upward into the Oval Office (well, outside of the Vice Presidents on those rare painful exceptions).  Thing is, people vote for experience: they vote for political figures, military leaders, governors and captains of industry because such candidates have proven themselves in some fashion.  So in a way, a President can be a man who's done wonders at a lower level of prestige and excites the populace into thinking they can do just as well as Leader Of the Free World.

Herbert Hoover was just such a man by 1928.  One of the self-made success stories of the early 20th Century: became a mining engineer in youth, then a mining consultant and leading business figure on the global stage, organized American evacuation from Europe on the outbreak of World War I and turned right around to lead relief effort and food aid for war-stricken Belguim, when the United States entered the war he was put in charge of food administration and effectively managed homeland rationing to ensure priority food supplies got overseas, and he oversaw relief efforts for post-war Germany and war-torn Russia (during the Bolshevik takeover) which were suffering massive famines.  By 1920 Hoover was considered one of the greatest humanitarians the world had seen.

Actively becoming a Republican when politics proved the next challenge in his life, Hoover was placed in Harding's Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce.  Taking control of what was a minor office at the time, Hoover used his initiative to establish a department dedicated to business growth and control of economic affairs.  When confronted with a problem that was lapsing in someone else's Cabinet, Hoover worked it so that Commerce became responsible for its oversight and fixes.  Where previous Presidents Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson were adversarial to corporations, Hoover - being a businessman himself - preferred the "soft power" approach of making business leaders allies instead of enemies.  He worked with banks and savings and loans to rework home mortgaging to promote home ownership to Americans, increasing home construction.  It all culminated in one massive economic boom of the Roaring Twenties.

Hoover was one of the incorruptible men under Harding's administration, and became one of the indispensable men under Coolidge's.  When 1928 rolled around and Coolidge refused to run for another term (well within the unofficial two-term limit), Hoover was practically the only choice the Republicans had for the Presidential nomination.  Despite personal concerns from Coolidge - they apparently didn't get along, the Passive-Negative Coolidge finding Hoover's aggressive personality abrasive at best - Hoover got the nom, easily won against the Democratic challenger Al Smith, and settled into the White House in 1929 under the belief that "no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system."

1929 is traditionally the year the Great Depression started.

There's still an argument about what caused it.  Considering the size and scope of what that Depression was, there had to be a variety of factors culminating in one perfect storm of an economic disaster.  Also, put a hundred economists into a debate room and you'll get a hundred different answers to the simple question "what caused it?"

It could have been any of these things.  The failure of Midwestern farms leading to foreclosures, and then bank failures in the wake of that.  The U.S. government commitment to the gold standard, which kept interest rates too high and limited monetary policy.  Wealth disparity during the 1920s which fed money into investments for the rich rather than spending income for the poor and middle classes.  Massive personal and financial debt across the board, another reason for the bank failures.  Land speculation, especially in Florida (hi again!), and a housing bubble related to that.  Growing unemployment caused by a decline in population numbers due to fewer families and fewer immigrants, which paradoxically made it harder for the flesh-and-blood unemployed to find jobs (it has something to do with the lack of demand in a growing consumer economy).

The infamous Stock Market Crash of October 1929 isn't viewed by the experts as a cause, but a symptom exposing to the world just how bad the economy was getting and turning the economic mood from positive to negative.  (Also, anyone else notice how a good number of those causes are similar to the problems we're facing today...?)

Almost one thing most of the economists would agree on was that the Great Depression wouldn't have been as bad as it had gotten (to some economists, in 1929 it was just a regular recession or panic) if the response to it had not been so badly bungled.

This is where Hoover's personality traits become part of the problem.  This is where being an Active-Negative at heart turned Hoover from one of the 20th Century's greatest men into one of history's greatest failed Presidents.

The defining trait of an Active-Negative President is Uncompromising.  The A-N operates by certain principles or beliefs that cannot bend in the face of "enemies" or those opposed to his work.  To quote Barber about A-Ns:

But the most pervasive feeling in the Active-Negative makeup is "I must."  He is a man under strict orders, required to concentrate, to produce, to follow out his destiny as he sees it.  At any given moment, he feels bound by what he has already undertaken, already promised, already committed...  He finds it hard even to see alternatives to the course he "must" follow, much less change that course when it proves unproductive...  From the inside... the Active-Negative type generates tremendous energies for political domination.  From the outside, he seems at first extraordinarily capable and then extraordinarily rigid, become more and more closed to experience, including the advice of his ardent allies... (p. 82)

Hoover's "I must" moment was the handling of the Depression.  Previous experience as a businessman and Commerce Secretary told him how to react (not act) to the economic crises of 1929: Let the market correct themselves.  Let the businesses fail that are going to fail, and the industries will recover on their own.    Hoover's Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon infamously deemed that to "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate..." and that it would make people "work harder and live a more moral life."  However, that meant one thing: liquidate everything in the economy because too many factors were failing all at once.  It also failed to consider the possibility that there was nothing in the economy people could work harder for, as unemployment went up and kept going up during Hoover's tenure.

In this regard, Hoover was a lot like other A-N Presidents - Van Buren, Cleveland, and Buchanan are good examples - when faced with a financial panic.  They too preferred to let the markets correct themselves.  And under normal circumstances, Hoover wouldn't have been far wrong: a brief recession in 1921 corrected itself by letting liquidation do its thing and redistribute capital.  Hoover's failing was thinking that all this economic panic was came from the financial markets re-adjusting itself.  It never occurred to him that parts of the economy were literally disappearing and never coming back.

Hoover instead focused on keeping the federal government solvent: he abhorred the trending Keynesian theories of government spending to "buy out" the economic crisis, and focused instead on keeping the budget balanced (again, sounds a bit familiar don't it).  The Depression cut into those attempts to budget, however, making Hoover even more reluctant to create massive spending projects to fix the Depression first.

This is partly where the Peter Principle comes into play as well.  Hoover, once one of the most competent men on the planet - great organizer, driven, focused on tasks and finishing them - became as President one of the most incompetent leaders at a time of need.  It wasn't so much that Hoover failed to respond - he actually did respond, a good number of government programs started between 1930 to 1932 formed the basis of much of the New Deal of the 1930s, famously with the Hoover Dam construction project - it was that he failed to organize on the scale that the crisis demanded, and for a man once driven to succeed he suddenly looked like he was just sitting there.

His previous jobs - engineer, mine owner, businessman, relief organizer, Commerce Secretary - were ones that did not necessarily require him to "think outside the box" as it were.  Respond to a problem and fix it with the tools at hand (not considering new tools may need to be invented).  Manage something already working and making sure it stays working (keeping the engine going while ignoring the fact the train is charging off a cliff).  Reforming government and adding regulations where needed (but drawing the line at where the private sector must remain free of the public sector).

Being President means making decisions, something that Hoover had done often before and usually successful at it.  But being President also means creating compromise solutions when the situation demands it, making decisions that a President will be uncomfortable making yet would recognize as necessary (an Active-Positive, for example, making a deal he knows will suck for himself or his personal allies but will make life easier for 100 million others).  And in Hoover's case, it meant making decisions (making the public sector more aggressive in job creation, for example) he wouldn't - and didn't - make.

As President, he was faced with a situation - the Great Depression - the size and scope of which was larger than anything seen before, especially in terms of job losses and mass unemployment.  Hoover was being asked by the desperation of the times - the Bonus Army marching on Washington for financial relief, the failure of businesses and banks to reinvest capital to spark a stalled economy - to make the hard decisions and compromises that could have relieved the crisis.  Asking an A-N President like himself to "think outside the box" and consider other economic models as possible fixes would have been akin to asking a whale to try walking on land instead of swimming in water.

Basically, Hoover had gotten promoted to a job he wasn't suited for.  The Presidency was something outside of his temperament.  If he had been Treasury Secretary or still Commerce Secretary in 1929, and the President was an Active-Positive sort calling on Hoover to solve some of the economic woes within his range of influence, I wouldn't doubt that Hoover would have resolved the matter within that term: doing so on the orders and direction of a man more capable of making the decisions Hoover couldn't make.

And we wouldn't have called homeless towns "Hoovervilles".  Hoover's reputation as a humanitarian would have remained intact: the image of him feeding children replacing the images of starving families in the history textbooks.

Remember the evil banker character from John Ford's Stagecoach?  At one point, he rails against the federal government and insists everything would work if there was a businessman in charge of government.  It was Ford's (and Hollywood's) rude judgment on the Hoover administration.  Which wasn't entirely unfair, but harsher than it deserved to be.

(P.S.: I wouldn't put the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act on Hoover's shoulders.  That was more a protectionist effort by Congress... which essentially started a trade war/boycott with the rest of the planet that made the Great Depression worse, thanks a bunch Smoot and Hawley)

Next: For this President, I might have to make two separate entries for two thematically different historical eras.

Leave It To The Onion To Realize What Americans Really Think

The Onion may be satire, but it is in satire that the truth is found.

Poll: Majority of Americans Approve Sending Congress to Syria.

Citing overwhelming support from the international community—including that of the Arab League, Turkey, and France, as well as Great Britain, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Japan, Mexico, China, and Canada, all of whom are reported to be unilaterally in favor of sending the U.S. Congress to Syria—the majority of survey respondents said they believe the United States should refocus its entire approach to Syria’s civil war on the ground deployment of U.S. senators and representatives, regardless of whether the Assad regime used chemical weapons or not.

In fact, 91 percent of those surveyed agreed that the active use of sarin gas attacks by the Syrian government would, if anything, only increase poll respondents’ desire to send Congress to Syria.

Seriously, I'd love to see Pew Research or Gallup or Rasmussen poll Americans on this.

Dear Congress: This is what happens when your favorable numbers are so bad that certain diseases are more popular than you.

The Massive Disconnect Between The Voters And The Elected

Among the many things bothering the hell out of me regarding Syria - the real need to focus first on the refugee crisis, the need to stop Assad's use of chemical weapons versus the inability to really do anything about it other than an outright invasion and all the horrors THAT would entail, the realization that the entire Middle East from Egypt to Libya is in total chaos and we're unable as an international power to focus on any of that - is this simple fact:

A vast majority of Americans are polling as opposed to any military strike or action on Syria... and our elected officials (and their friends in the Beltway media) are still poised to vote in favor of it.

Link to Pew Research Center's results:

Also wik:

Yet just right now, the Senate Foreign Relations committee overseeing such issues just voted 10-7 in favor of a "limited military response" to Syria's use of chemical weapons.  There's still a full Senate vote I believe and also a House resolution, but most of the experts believe that both parties may go along with approval (Dems because they have the need to back their party's nominal leader, Republicans because there's a sizable faction of neocon interventionists seeking to "tame" the Middle East through superior firepower).

Usually elected officials are more aware, more alert to the reality that voting whole-heartedly against their constituents' opinions tends to be a bad idea.  They're at least aware of the risks: even during the health care reform debates a good number of Democrats openly worried they would lose seats over passing any reform despite the fact that everybody knew health care costs needed to be controlled somehow.

Yet with the Syrian military strike as an issue, there's this kind of intellectual if not emotional disconnect to what's happening.  None of the politicians seem to be pointing to the poll numbers or worrying about how this plays "back home" with their voters.  If there are any, I'm not seeing them speak up on the news channels or websites.  (If there's at least one, please pass along the link)

Sullivan points it out clearly:

I cannot remember a war in which the public in the most affected countries is so opposed. And that opposition is not likely to melt in a week or so – certainly not if many people listened to John Kerry yesterday. And that poll is about the abstraction of “strikes” – and not about the open-ended war to depose Assad that the administration actually proposed in its own resolution. Mercifully, Americans are not as dumb as many think...

I don't consider the polling about invading Iraq in 2002 to be of relevance here: considering that Congress and the public were lied to about Saddam's having WMDs as an excuse to go in, the general public support for that invasion/occupation is kind of an illusion.

There's been times that the DC "establishment" were not in tune with the nation as a whole: the obsessive hate-on for Clinton (not just the GOP but the media elites and power-brokers operating in DC) that made many voters side with him when the Lewinsky scandal broke is a recent example.  But this time it's troubling.  This time, lives - ours and Syrians - are at stake.  The chaos of the Middle East may well get worse if military action takes place.  And there's no guarantee that the planned missile strikes will do anything productive.

In a situation where diplomacy makes the most sense - the possibility of getting with Russia and Iran, Syria's primary backers, both of whom are troubled by the gas attacks as well - it's terrifying that nobody in DC wants to argue for this as a sensible alternative.

This isn't Munich.  Like Conor points out - "For Hawks, it is always 1938" - there's no Chamberlain-esque appeasement here other than trying to find something that would stop the damn bloodshed:

Every part of that part of that argument is wrong. The war weariness of post-WWI Britain was very different from the war weariness of present day America, and an unwillingness to strike dictators who kill their own people is not the same as appeasement. By Hirsh's logic, it is imperative that we immediately invade North Korea because otherwise we are appeasing it, and inviting it to begin a blitzkrieg across the Western world, because Hitler. The approach he implies -- intervention wherever there is a dictator or a mass murder -- is a recipe for far more war, and far more misery from war.

One of our nation's biggest problems hasn't been the partisan brinkmanship, the incessant noise machine drowning out policy solutions, the sheer amount of money in the electioneering business (seriously, it's in the billions now), it's been the Lack Of Accountability.  We're having one of those Lack Of Accountability moments.  And everyone's failing the moment.

The True Meaning Of Labor Day

Presents.  Yeah...

No, wait, that's South Park.

Labor Day came about because Grover Cleveland once sent the military out to suppress a workers' strike.  The public reaction was mostly for it, but the unions railed against the use of the military like that and convinced Congress to pass legislation designating the first Monday of September to honor Labor (not Labour, which is the UK political party.  We're Americans dammit we f-ck with the letter U whenever we can).  Appeased with such a meager trade-off, the labor unions later gave Grover Cleveland a collective firm handshake and friendly pat on the shoulder.

AND THUS WAS THE HOLIDAY BORN.

Now, back to presents!

Promoted With Comment: the Times' Editorial on Rick "Go Away" Scott

If you don't get the St. Pete... sigh, the Tampa Bay Times, you missed a front-page editorial titled Governor Phony, on one of the worst governors the state of Florida has ever seen:

...The reality is Scott failed to show up at his own summit to listen to the concerns of school superintendents and others. Instead he ate dinner privately with former Gov. Jeb Bush, whose passion for education is unquestioned even if some of his views are controversial.

This year's per student funding is the highest of Scott's three years as governor. But it is still lower than each of the five previous years under his predecessors, Charlie Crist and Bush. Scott also signed into law the legislation that siphons off school construction money to privately run charter schools. And the governor's last two hand-picked education commissioners have shown more interest in advocating for charter schools and expanding voucher programs than in creating successful public schools.

Now there is another interim education commissioner, and the revolving door in Tallahassee leaves local school districts without clear direction from the state. Will Scott fold on Common Core and the student assessments needed to make them work?

...The governor decimated growth management and eliminated the agency that enforced it. He fought the federal government over clean-water standards, neutered the water management districts by slashing their tax base and manipulated the regulatory process to put politics above science. His money for Florida's springs is hardly meaningful. The deal he cut with the federal government on restoring the Everglades put the deadline off again. And to raise money to buy sensitive lands, the state's solution is to sell land it already owns.

Scott is still looking at toll roads to nowhere across the middle of Florida. The state still has no cohesive energy policy. And the governor's environmental agency is more focused on quickly approving the requests of developers than on protecting wetlands. A news conference on one worthy project cannot mask years of bad policy.

...Scott inaccurately claims he is more than halfway toward meeting his pledge of creating 700,000 jobs, and he keeps cranking out the news releases. Last week: 100 jobs at Boeing in Miami; 105 new air cargo jobs in Orlando; 200 jobs at technology company Citrix in Fort Lauderdale. The week before that: 40 jobs at the moving and storage company PODS in Clearwater.

Many of the jobs Scott counts won't be created for years, if ever, and the bigger picture is darker. The state's unemployment rate has been stuck at 7.1 percent for three months, better than the national average of 7.4 percent. A report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the labor force expanded in the Tampa Bay area, Jacksonville and Orlando in the past year but in other areas — South Florida, the Panhandle, Bradenton, Sarasota and Lakeland — the labor force contracted. And the jobless rate in Pasco and Hernando counties is still 8 percent or higher.

Scott's heavy-handed attempt to lure companies from other states is a public relations nightmare, and it isn't working. While Florida now has roughly as many jobs as before the recession, people earn less and there are more part-time jobs. Jobs in the low-paying leisure and hospitality sectors are up. Better paying jobs in construction, manufacturing and professional/business services are still down...

...Scott sat by as House Speaker Will Weatherford blocked expansion, and he has dropped the issue. What the governor has done is reject millions in federal dollars to implement health care reform and left the creation of an insurance exchange to the federal government. He also foolishly signed into law a ban on state regulation of health insurance rates for two years.

New U.S. Census figures show nearly 1 in 4 Floridians lack health insurance, the second highest rate in the nation. Hospitals in Orlando, Vero Beach and elsewhere are laying off workers and reducing pay in part because the new Medicaid dollars aren't coming.

Scott isn't expanding access to health care. He is working against it. He is making it harder for hospitals to make ends meet, harder for the uninsured to get coverage and harder for businesses to comply with the federal law...

Here's my two cents: this commentary needs to be on the front of every Florida newspaper between now and Election Day 2014.  We need to remind Floridians that Rick Scott is not in this for the state, he's in it for himself and he'll f-ck us over to get it.  Pardon my Swedish.

Thank you.