Write-off

For what it’s worth… one gent at the Corner gathered together a few political obituaries for Governor Reagan’s career in national politics:

Newsweek, 1971, “Ronald Reagan’s Slow Fade,” ended with the judgment that “the somber truth is that Sacramento may mark the end of Ronald Reagan’s political road. . . By every normal measure, Ronald Reagan ought to be entitled to any political future he wants. A close aide said, ‘The Presidency? Oh, he’s not interested. Four more years and I think you’ll see Ronald Reagan riding one of his horses off into the sunset.’” And see Stephen Roberts in the New York Times Magazine: “In 1976, the reasoning goes, Reagan would be 65, and too old to run.” “When a guy’s built on celluloid,” Democratic State Senator George Moscone said, “he goes up fast, but he burns out quickly.”

After the 1976 campaign, Newsweek offered a reprise, “Into the Sunset”: “The concluding line of Reagan’s convention speech—’There is no substitute for victory’—could also turn out to be a epitaph for his own political career.”

And not to be left out, John Coyne wrote in some magazine called National Review that “Reagan seems somewhat out of step with the new political stirrings, a man very much of the Sixties. . . For a decade he has been a central symbol of everything that is best in what we call the conservative movement, and if his approach and his ideas are obsolete, then so are those many of us who believe in him. And it’s never much fun to be a middle-aged anachronism.”

The difference, of course, is this: Reagan had two full terms as governor.  He was well-read.  He wrote his own speeches.  He held his own in debates on the national stage — he soundly defeated Bobby Kennedy in a 1967 forum.  He kept in touch with his audience with regular radio addresses, all of which he wrote on his own.  His initial appearance on the political scene — “The Speech” — was his own composition.  He was involved in ideological campaigns.

Governor Palin, by contrast, will have had two-and-a-half years as governor.  They were good years, but it’s no two-term tenure.  She can give a good speech, whether it’s prepared or off the cuff, but there has been nothing similar — so far — to the substance that President Reagan always offered — even if the criticism she has taken on the national stage has been quite similar to that which Reagan received.

Simply having the right enemies doesn’t cut it.  That is the road to Know-Nothingism — anti-intellectualism for the sake of anti-intellectualism.  [By all means, be anti-intelligentsia -- if you are a moral person, you should be -- but offer something better than what they offer!]

***

The divide on Palin on the right is this — is she already a great political talent, or is she a potential one (and is she now blowing that potential)?

Maybe she has a plan.

Presumably she has a plan.

Unfortunately, right now it does seem to me that she is blowing her potential… in the short run, at the very least.  She’s 45, she’s young still — which is what baffles me still about yesterday.

The obvious thing to do was to serve two full terms as Alaskan governor, to get serious about ideas, to give rousing speeches about conservative ideas and principles (and write a book or two), and to end up seeking the nomination in 2016 or 2020 with a full head of steam and a toolkit full of ideas about where to take the country.

So… who knows?  I have no idea what she’s up to.

In these days, when a two year United States senator can decide to stand for the presidency — and win it — anything can happen.

But that doesn’t mean it should.

Update:

All of which brings us back to Steyn (contra Althouse):

… Occam’s Razor leaves us with: Who needs this?

In states far from the national spotlight, politics still attracts normal people. You’re a mayor or a state senator or even the governor, but you lead a normal life. The local media are tough on you, but they know you, they live where you live, they’re tough on the real you, not on some caricature cooked up by a malign alliance of late-night comics who’d never heard of you a week earlier and media grandees supposedly on your own side who pronounce you a “cancer”.

Then suddenly you get the call from Washington. You know it’ll mean Secret Service, and speechwriters, and minders vetting your wardrobe. But nobody said it would mean a mainstream network comedy host doing statutory rape gags about your 14-year old daughter. You’ve got a special-needs kid and a son in Iraq and a daughter who’s given you your first grandchild in less than ideal circumstances. That would be enough for most of us. But the special-needs kid and the daughter and most everyone else you love are a national joke, and the PC enforcers are entirely cool with it.

Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to – what’s the word? – “empathize”? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you’d have to turn into under that scenario?

That’s got to be it.

Throwing in the towel, giving the finger to the media, and saying, “I’ve got better things to do with my life than this.”

Pity.

Update again:  And apparently Instapundit has declared war.

JIM GERAGHTY: “The lesson that the ruthless corners of the political world will take from the rise, fall, and departure of Sarah Palin that if you attack a politician’s children nastily enough and relentlessly enough, you can get anybody to quit.”

And I don’t want to hear any of that dishonest have-you-no-decency posturing from the usual moral poseurs if that happens to somebody they like. They have sown the wind.

H’m.

Update the third:  VDH –

In other words, it doesn’t matter that much what critics say, but — should she pursue politics — only what she does with her newfound time, especially if she travels widely, studies foreign policy, and helps galvanize the party base.

In the long run, she can lecture, earn a good income through speaking, develop a coterie of advisers and supporters, take care of her family, not have the constant political warring on all flanks, and invest time in reflecting and studying issues, visit the country, meet leaders, etc. She’s not looking at 2012; but in eight years by 2016 she will be far more savvy, still young, and far more experienced. It matters not all that the Left writes her off as daffy, since they were going to do that whatever she did; the key is whether she convinces conservatives in eight year of travel and reflection that she’s a  charismatic Margaret Thatcher type heavyweight.

True.

What matters is her relationship with the right (if she has not already thrown in the towel).

Shocked, shocked

A Facebook friend of mine posted this article from the Crimson on anti-Moroccan racism in the Netherlands.

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands — Within five minutes of stepping off the train and onto the platform in Central Station when I arrived here earlier this month, I got a taste of the “typical Dutch” bluntness that my fellowship coordinators warned the nine other American students and me about.  …

Still, all the families were “native Dutch,” the politically correct term for “white” in this country.

Of course, this didn’t bother me in the least. But it might help explain why the first exchange with one of the host “mothers” went something like this.

Me: “Hi, I’m from America. Good to meet you.”

Mother: “Hi there. Are you Moroccan?”

Non-sequitur, much?

In our country, such a question—as impulsive as it seems—would rarely garner anything but a short laugh and clarification from me, or, I think it’s safe to say, from anyone who looks remotely Arab. But in Holland, as I soon found out, Moroccans possess a universally-accepted, second-class social status—as do most other “allochtoon,” a now-derogatory word for “immigrant.” Ask any Dutch person, and he or she will (bluntly) tell you the same.  …

For Arabs, the situation is worse. To assume a young man is “Moroccan” is to assume he is a juvenile delinquent, said Frank Bovenerk, a former professor of criminology at the University of Utrecht.

“Here, it’s very popular to focus on race and ethnicity,” Bovenerk told me after a guest lecture I attended two weeks ago. “Xenophobia is rampant—to the point that minorities are actually afraid of deportation.”

As an outsider, it baffles me how this could ever happen in The Netherlands. During World War II, it was the advanced Dutch system of registering ethnic minorities that facilitated the deportation and subsequent extermination of innocent Jews from this country. Though the Dutch have since trumpeted the mantra of “never again,” has their society really learned its lesson?

I’m a little afraid to get the blunt answer.

I could give the blunt answer.

It’s a horribly unfair one to the folks whose parents are from the Middle East or the Maghreb, who nevertheless have assimilated into liberal Western society.

But… Amsterdam has been marked by the murder of Theo Van Gogh.

What’s more, Western European political discourse has been caught up in the sorts of arguments that Nick Cohen describes:

Rohan Jayasekera, the associate editor, invited readers of its website to see van Gogh’s murder as a smart business move – ‘Applaud Theo van Gogh’s death as the marvellous piece of street theatre it was,’ he cried. ‘What timing! Just as his long-awaited film of Pim Fortuyn’s life is ready to screen. Bravo, Theo! Bravo!’ Jayasekera slyly suggested the film maker was suffering from an inherited strain of insanity because he was ‘a descendant of the mad genius Dutch painter,’ before going on to say that you couldn’t be surprised that his film had provoked a furious response because it was ‘furiously provocative’.

You may be able to guess the rest of the argument. As has become commonplace, the perpetrator was whisked away from the crime scene while the blame was piled on the stricken victim. The real censor wasn’t the murderer, but van Gogh, who was guilty of roaring ‘his Muslim critics into silence with his obscenities’. The real extremist wasn’t the murderer but van Gogh, who was ‘a free speech fundamentalist’. The real murderer wasn’t the assassin who fired eight bullets into a defenceless man, sliced open his throat and stabbed him in the chest, but van Gogh who was on ‘a martyrdom operation’ and so, presumably, was responsible for his own death.

What was most telling was Index’s treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who worked with van Gogh on the film. I can remember when she would have been a liberal heroine. Ali is a Somali, who was circumcised at five – if you want the gory details of what female circumcision involves, by the way, I’m afraid you’re going to have to look them up. She fled from an arranged marriage at 22. She overcame enormous handicaps to become a Dutch MP and, as free men and women are entitled to do, decided she didn’t believe in God. Needless to add her secularism made her dangerous enemies, and the police had to protect her from Islamists. Their guard was increased when the killer stuck a five-page letter addressed to her to van Gogh’s body with a dagger.  …

Index’s editors and board said in a statement that no one was ‘more distressed by the murder of an artist for his opinions’ than they were. If this is true, they’ve a funny way of showing it. When I asked Jayasekera if he had any regrets, he said he had none. He told me that, like many other readers, I shouldn’t have made the mistake of believing that Index on Censorship was against censorship, even murderous censorship, on principle – in the same way as Amnesty International is opposed to torture, including murderous torture, on principle. It may have been so its radical youth, but was now as concerned with fighting ‘hate speech’ as protecting free speech.

So, given that those who defended Van Gogh and Ali were “free speech fundamentalists” and “Islamophobes” who should be drummed out of polite society, it should be somewhat less than surprising that one reaction among even those very left-wing sorts who put up American college students is to be somewhat afraid of Amsterdam’s Moroccan diaspora.

You can either deal with these sorts of issues using universalist principles — Enlightenment principles — or you can see people retreat to the safety of group identity.

But if group identity trumps — as it does when we insist that a religious right to be protected against offensive words trump an individual’s right to free expression — one shouldn’t be surprised when other individuals suddenly become very interested in which group a visitor belongs to.

Pity the poor American college student with a Libyan father and a German mother, who walks into the middle of that mess.

Palin’s resignation

Could I get a “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot“?

Update:  Echo Geraghty.  Really.

Update again:  Bill Kristol is spinning on Fox — “crazy like a fox”.

Beats me.  I give up on trying to figure out this stuff.

“We just saw the opening volley of the 2012 presidential campaign.”

Give me boring, I say — I’ll take Mitt Romney.

Update the third:  Well, there is that Macarthur quote…

But here’s my bottom line — I thought Romney’s resume was thin last year, with only a term as governor.  (Get re-elected to that office before you aim higher, I say…)

But two-and-a-half years?!

Update the fourth:  “Never, ever does things by the book.”

I’ll say.

Update the fifth:  Another take –

Wow.  Not sure what to make of this.  Perhaps she’s trying to one-up Michael Jackson in taking the heat off Mark Sanford.  (”Take that, Jacko!”  Which Republican governor will step up next?)

Oh, you GOP governors!

Kristol also expanded his take.

Update the sixth:  The Atlantic’s Ambinder thinks she wants to fight.

Time’s Halperin isn’t sure.

Kaus is collecting theories.

Update the seventh:  Althouse is sure that she’s running.

Joe Scarborough thinks this is like Dean’s scream.

Update the eighth:  Steyn puts himself in Palin’s shoes.  (And is remarkably kind about it…)

Role reversal

Typically, it is the United States that pushes for increased sanctions on our foreign adversaries, and our European allies who resist this approach.

Now, our roles are reversed.

According to officials, sanctions against Iran are expected to top the G8’s agenda. Sources are also predicting a pointed debate between the heads of the industrialized nations over an appropriate response to Iranian authorities’ suppression of reformist demonstrations in Iran led by Mir Hossein Mousavi and other Iranian opposition leaders.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hinted in a newspaper interview earlier in the week that the G8 is due to decide on new financial sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Berlusconi disclosed that he had spoken with the heads of the G8 nations and has discussed such steps with them.

According to the Italian prime minister, “the general leaning [among G8 leaders] is toward sanctions.”

However, diplomatic sources in New York reported that American officials are working behind the scenes to prevent new sanctions from being imposed against Iran.

Say what you will, this is a new direction for American foreign policy…

Citizenship quiz…

Spurred by this, I hunted down a 96-question quiz from the History Channel.

My score?  93/96.

I was iffy on the two longest rivers, and I messed up a couple of other questions, but I’m a generally good citizen.

(Demonstrated, I suppose, by my passing the Foreign Service exam…)

Update:  For the record, the fact that Arizona public high school students passed the citizenship exam at a 3.5% rate and that Arizona private high school students passed the exam at a 14% rate — this is an embarrassment, and perhaps evidence that said students were rebelling against having to take the exam rather than a true exhibition of their knowledge base.

I can’t believe that they’d be so ignorant — something like a 60% passage rate would be embarrassing enough.

Next step…

Well, I passed the Foreign Service Officer Test.

Got an e-mail today with a link to the PDF letter.

Now I have to prepare some short answers for the Qualifications Evaluation Panel.

***

Am psyched about this, even though it was exactly what I expected — had I failed that exam, I would have had to seriously reconsider my estimation of my own intelligence…

Update:  Next test of intelligence: figure out where the heck on the g-dd-mned website one finds the questions to answer for the QEP — I only have three weeks to do them & I want to take my time.

Maybe they won’t be available for me till tomorrow?

Update again:  For those of you interested in writing the exam, go see this guide.

Actually, I’m feeling a little smarter now — it is a select group of people who take that exam, and an even more select group who pass it.

I took it and passed it on my first shot.

Update the third, 2:58 PM:  They’re up now.

All right.

Three weeks to come up with good answers to these questions.

Musical interlude: South Carolinian governor-style

All Out of Love:

For the governor who just won’t shut up.

***

Or do it Van Wilder style.

Schism?

Hillary makes her move:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged President Obama for two days to toughen his language on Iran before he did so, and then was surprised when he condemned Iran’s crackdown on demonstrators last week, administration officials say.  …

Behind the scenes, the officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing internal deliberations, said Mrs. Clinton had been advocating the stronger U.S. response, but the president resisted. When he finally took her advice, the aides said, he did so without informing her first.

This was the first known example of awkwardness between the two former rivals for the Democratic nomination for president since they made up following Mr. Obama’s election. The disagreement also gave some insight into the Obama administration’s foreign policy decision-making process five months into its term.  …

“It was a happy surprise,” one administration official said. “It was echoing the line the secretary had been pushing for a couple of days.”

Well, I wouldn’t want to be associated with President Obama’s first take on Iran, either…

Update:  On the other hand, Washington seems to be learning…  [via Commentary]

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, California — The Air Force successfully launched an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile Monday from the California coast to an area in the Pacific Ocean some 4,200 miles away.

The ICBM was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Santa Barbara at 3:01 a.m. and carried three unarmed re-entry vehicles to their targets near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, said Lt. Raymond Geoffroy.

The missile, configured with a National Nuclear Security Administration Test Assembly, was launched under the direction of the 576th Flight Test Squadron, whose members installed tracking and command destruct systems on it to collect data and meet safety requirements.

“It’s really something when you see a truly outstanding team come together,” Col. David Buck, 30th Space Wing commander, said in a written statement. “I couldn’t think of a better team to demonstrate the awesome capability of our ICBM fleet.”

Take that, Pyongyang!

A tale of two fiscal conservatives

Sanford continues his descent:

He told the AP that the shenanigans with other women came during trips outside the country with male friends to, and I quote, “blow off steam.” Whether that means trips to a strip club or something more, only Sanford knows. But just wait a day or two. I’m sure we’ll find out.

As of last night, nearly 50 percent of South Carolinians thought he should stay on. Can’t wait to see what happens to that number tomorrow. Exit question: Show of hands, ladies. How many of you would be willing to take back a guy who told you, “I’ve met this other woman and she’s totally my soulmate, but I’m going to try real hard to fall back in love with you”?

*face-palm*  *double-facepalm*

Please, please, please resign.

Toomey continues his ascent:

To paraphrase Major Garrett, what took them so long?  Toomey didn’t just come out of nowhere.  He won an election to Congress in a district best described as moderate, replacing a retiring Democratic incumbent and beating another popular Democrat by ten points.  He won re-election twice afterwards, until he kept his promise to limit himself to three terms in the House.  The notion that Toomey would only appeal to the Republican base has no evidence, other than the fears among Specter apologists.  …

Now that the Obama administration and the Democrats have embarked on what can only be called Extreme Government Spending, the GOP has belatedly awakened to its best opportunity: to find reliable, trustworthy fiscal conservatives to rebuild its credibility and provide a brake to massive irresponsibility on Capitol Hill.  Instead of fearing Toomey, the party should have embraced him from the beginning — and sought out more like him.  Let’s hope they’ve begun to get the message that 2010 will be about the economy, the deficit, and insane levels of spending.

Of course:

“You can’t win in Pennsylvania unless you have broad appeal. Let’s face it, in Pennsylvania, there are more Democrats than Republicans,” said Toomey. “What I have to do is wage a campaign that has a message that is aligned with Pennsylvania voters.”

I think he can.  Provided that he doesn’t crack up like Mark Sanford did…

Update:  Yes –

Lucy, last week I thought Mark Sanford could survive the adultery. But I don’t think he can survive his weirdly exhibitionist public meditations on the adultery.  …

As Lisa said the other day, put not your trust in princes. I support the Governor on limited government, spending and taxes, but sorry, his talents are not so unique that it’s worth putting up with a narcissist buffoon.

Right.

Whom does the world trust in?

Apparently, Obama.

US President Barack Obama has the confidence of many publics around the world – inspiring far more confidence than any other world political leader according to a new poll of 20 nations by WorldPublicOpinion.org. A year ago, President Bush was one of the least trusted leaders in the world.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin now have the most negative confidence ratings around the world. On average across all nations about half have little or no confidence that they will “do the right thing regarding world affairs” while just a third or less do have confidence.  …

An average of 61 percent express a lot or some confidence in Obama to do the right thing in world affairs, across the nineteen nations polled (excluding the US). Thirty-one percent say they have not too much or no confidence at all. In 13 nations, a majority or plurality has confidence in Obama; in five nations they do not; one nation is divided. A majority of the American public (70%) also expresses confidence in Obama in world affairs.  …

Among the national leaders studied in this poll, Chancellor Merkel has the second-highest rating – on average 40 percent express confidence in her, while 38 percent do not. Nine nations have positive views, but eight show little confidence, and two are divided. Most nations in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe report confidence in Merkel, but most majority-Muslim nations do not.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon receives the second-highest rating behind Obama. On average his ratings lean positive (40% to 35%) and 11 nations express confidence, seven do not, and two are divided. Views are especially positive in Asia and Africa. Only in the US and in some nations in the Middle East (Egypt, the Palestinian territories, and Turkey) does a majority express low confidence.

Go figure.

But heck, if the world has fallen that hard for our president, maybe he actually can get some of those things done overseas that he wants to…

Update:  On the other hand, judging from his reaction to the Honduras and this (and this), I’d probably count myself among the 31%.