Article VI Blog

Make no mistake – the Scandalrama that has erupted in DC represents new fronts in the Culture War.  Two fronts to be exact.

Corporate Culture

The breadth and scope pf the scandals indicate that this is not a few individuals going rogue.  Think of the number of agencies that we have heard about in the last two weeks that have been involved in corrupt, or at least unethical practices.  IRS leads the pack, but the DOJ, State, EPA, HHS and many others have come up with one problem or another.  THAT is a cultural problem within the government.

There is an important lesson that can be learned from this – Culture matters more than issues.  This is why litmus tests don’t work.  You see, I have no doubt that Obama knew little of all this garbage going in.  That does not make him any  less culpable, I just think it accentuates his bad management and makes his sins ones of omission, not commission.  I think it is pretty easy to form an image of the president has having hired all his cronies, let them go, and then going off to play golf, assuming the dimbulbs he hired had things well in hand.  I have no doubt everyone he hired was a card-carrying, ticket-punching liberal activist that hit the issue list just right.  But they clearly did not know beans about how to run a government.  (Politics and a campaign they knew how to do in spades, but not governance.)

Consider the latest response to come out of the White House:

Struggling to find his footing after one of the most turbulent weeks in office, President Obama’s aides have ordered the White House staff to spend no more than 10 percent of their time on controversies, Mark Landler and Michael D. Shear report. Democratic strategists are now working on a plan to intensify the administration’s focus on revamping immigration laws, reaching a budget deal and implementing the new health care legislation.

That is not leadership, that is accounting (10% of their time indeed!) and optics.  That approach is denial of the problem, not an effort to change the culture within the executive branch of the government.

As those of us of faith approach the culture war it is important that we see this clearly.  The culture war is not primarily about abortion and same sex marriage, it’s about a culture where such things do not rise to the level of being issues, just as the corrupt practices of the Obama administration should never have been issues to begin with.  That means we of faith need to learn how to lead the nation, not just complain about its wrong turns.  Which leads me to the second front…

Character Culture

One of the questions that has been niggling in the back of my mind for the last week has been, “Where are the careerists?”  The government is full of employees for whom this is a career, not a political appointment.  Think of those that testified about Benghazi, they were pros, not appointees.  Where are such people in the IRS?

Now, I am guessing based on yesterday’s testimony, that there were some structural hide-and-seek going on.  Miller yesterday tried to hide behind a claim that these applications were grouped for “efficiency.”  I have little doubt that was the internal claim of the agency.  I would suspect that the unit that got these grouped claims was staffed almost entirely by appointees, not career types, and thus they were able to ply their intimidation trade without much scrutiny or counter force.  But even such structural steps would be extraordinary and should have drawn some outcry from the career types.

Why did that not happen?  Well, for one, I have little doubt that the federal employee unions were pretty active.  But more importantly, I think it is because those career types did not have sufficiently developed character to see this for the problem that it was and then to stand and take the risks involved in crying out.  I think a few may yet appear now that they can count on Congressional cover, but someone should have come forward a long time ago as far as I am concerned.  (Of course what we do not yet know is whether someone DID go forward to, say, the White House where their complaints were greeted with complacency.  Yet another sin of omission.)

This is why the “religious test” that was so clearly and unambiguously applied to these applications is so stunningly awful.  You see, if religion can be relegated into some box that reads “only for Sunday morning worship” then people of the character that would have come forward won’t exist at all, anywhere.  Such ethics and courage do not grow in the wild; they must be cultivated.  Religion is one of the few forces in our nation that does such cultivation – at least it should.

The primary front on the culture war is the one where we continue to cultivate and fight for our right to do such cultivation.  If we do that then abortion and same sex marriage will be forgone conclusions, not issues at all.  If we do that then when the inevitable corrupt influences creep into government, people will be in place that will do what is necessary to keep that corruption from becoming endemic.

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From Chris Moody (HT: Jim Geraghty):

On June 22, 2009, the Coalition for Life of Iowa received a letter from the IRS office in Cincinnati, Ohio, that oversees tax exemptions requesting details about how often members pray and whether their prayers are “considered educational.”

“Please explain how all of your activities, including the prayer meetings held outside of Planned Parenthood, are considered educational as defined under 501(c)(3),” reads the letter, made public by the Thomas More Society, a public interest law firm that collected evidence about the IRS practices. “Organizations exempt under 501(c)(3) may present opinions with scientific or medical facts. Please explain in detail the activities at these prayer meetings. Also, please provide the percentage of time your organizations spends on prayer groups as compared with the other activities of the organization.”

Geraghty said, “Today’s hearing on IRS abuses had a lot of “are you kidding me?” moments….”  That is frankly – understatement.  I find myself praying for the patience to let the system work.  That is simply contemptible.  Not to mention utterly chilling.

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So, yesterday we briefly mentioned how weak Obama is looking on the international stage.  You know,

I Wonder…

…if Obama and Holder realize just how weak their excuse of, “It’s a big organization, we cannot know all of what goes on,” really makes them look – and by extension the nation?  I wonder if they are capable of doing the geopolitical calculus that would lead one to conclude that such apparent weakness is why countries like China are feeling expansionist?  I wonder if they understand that China may suspect the US no longer has Japan’s back when it comes to defending Okinawa?

These people are supposed to be in control of their own organizations, after all.  If they are not, if the organizations they run are so out of their control that scandal after scandal after scandal can erupt without their ever knowing what is going on, then they are weak indeed.

Either Obama and Holder appear not smart enough to know that their excuses weaken the nation, or they really are not in control of the organizations.  Either way they actually weaken the nation – hugely.  Either way…

…I Am Amazed…

…at how unsophisticated they apparently are.  It’s not just that they cannot see the effects their excuse making is having on the international stage.  It’s that the scandals themselves are so brutish as to make Watergate look like the work of genius’.

It takes an amazing combination of hubris and self-absorption to think that what amounts to political thuggery would go undetected.  Hubris that they are somehow above such concerns, and self-absorption in their total inability to entertain things outside their proscribed viewpoint, like the fact that a diplomatic post might be under actual attack.  Did they really think they had the press in such thrall that they would not object to the wholesale interference with the collection and dissemination of news?  (Actually that is not amazing, that is shocking – the press lives on a high horse – their apparent Obama thrall is not about Obama, it’s about the high horse of his color.  You would think even the proud, self-absorbed Obama was smart enough to know that double crossing that bunch would backfire.)  Did they really think Americans would stand by idly while they squelched our most basic rights using the oppressive powers of the IRS?

Where are the double-blinds, the cut-outs, the misdirection, and the other craft that even organized crime, not the most educated individuals in the world, seems to be smart enough to have in place when they engage in this sort of brute force thuggery?  I am amazed at how unsmart this gang really seems to be.

But most amazing is the timing, one magic year keeps creeping up as the genesis of all this scandal – 2010.  Well, except for Benghazi which was about 2012.  Yep, Obama got his electoral head handed to him in 2010 (largely by Tea Party types) so he turned thug to survive in 2012.  All this scandal was not in service to an ideology, or some other imagined greater good.  It is purely an attempt to hold onto office.  Turns out Mr. “Satisfied to be a one term president” was not so satisfied after all.  The press is turning on him faster than an Indianapolis race car turns left.  I wonder if the leftie ideologues will be far behind?

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… or YES, WE ARE THE WORLD’S POLICEMAN

The weakness of this administration greatly precedes the breaking scandals of the last  couple of weeks.  But along with those scandals, other related issues are coming home to roost.

Our diplomats are being arrested and accused of spying and China make s a play for Okinawa.  This stuff is not a response to terrorism – no mere religious expression this.  These are not a bunch of [insert your derisive and dismissive description of jihadis here] killing a few people with bombs and airplanes. This is the game of nations.  This is trying to change the map of the world.

And you can bet your bottom dollar that this aggressiveness on the part of our global competitors is directly related to the this administration’s ever weakening response to terrorism and and the trouble that Obama finds himself in domestically.

This kind of stuff is why Nixon resigned.  Obama better clean house and he better do so quickly or this kind of stuff will only increase.  The world cannot afford it.

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One seeks the office of President of The United States in order to serve the people of the United States.  It is a sacred trust.

There is no more important nor deeper service to the nation that one in such office can undertake than the direct protection of the lives of the nations citizens.  Many, even most, presidents are not afforded the opportunity to so directly and demonstrably offer such protection by simply putting the military between the citizens and the enemy.

This president, Barack Obama, and the likely next Democrat candidate for the office, Hillary Clinton, were offered such a rare and sacred opportunity in Benghazi Libya.

THEY FAILED!

Until this week’s hearings, I had assumed that such failings were a result of incompetence.  I had assumed that they had failed to construct the appropriate communications infrastructure to know what was going on – that they were so focused on other policy that the mechanisms of government simply kept this in the background until it was too late.  The cover-up of the failings was apparent, but standard issue, even weak, stuff when the government messes up.  I figured the cover-up was the crime, not the underlying incompetence.

But no more.  The lack of action on the administration’s part now seems calculated and purposeful.  We know that Clinton spoke to people on the ground in Libya as the attacks were occurring.  We must assume she kept the president informed.  We know talking points were altered.

Peggy Noonan this morning:

The Obama White House sees every event as a political event. Really, every event, even an attack on a consulate and the killing of an ambassador.

Because of that, it could not tolerate the idea that the armed assault on the Benghazi consulate was a premeditated act of Islamist terrorism. That would carry a whole world of unhappy political implications, and demand certain actions. And the American presidential election was only eight weeks away. They wanted this problem to go away, or at least to bleed the meaning from it.

Because the White House could not tolerate the idea of Benghazi as a planned and deliberate terrorist assault, it had to be made into something else.

Let me rephrase that just a little.  The administration put its own political gain in front of the lives of American citizens.  They violated the most sacred of trusts in the office.  They did not just fail to measure up to that trust – they purposefully violated it.

Michael Gerson:

The administration’s handling of the Benghazi attack was politically effective, but not without real world costs.

Gerson seems still to think incompetence.  I agree with him there is no criminality here, but the violation of trust between the people and its government is much deeper and more extraordinary than Watergate.  The “real world costs” here were American lives.  In point of fact I have been trying since the hearings to think of a greater historical violation of the trust invested in the office than this one.   To date I have not come up with one.  Bigger mistakes perhaps, but remember this no longer appears to be a mistake – this was purposeful.

We wrote a lot on this blog during the campaign season about Romney’s abundance of character, in contrast to Obama’s relative lack of it.  I thought that was evident even before now, though I have expected Obama’s second term to add considerable evidence to the pile.  I never expected that evidence to include human lives.

I am ashamed.  These particular deaths occurred before the election.  No amount of work or effort on my part – on Romney’s behalf – could have saved these lives.  But how many more will there be before this administration ends?  How many more might there be in pursuit of a Hillary Clinton administration?  That is why I am ashamed.

We all should be – our nation is supposed to be better than this.

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The 2012 election, as I said in the opening post in this series raised a terribly important question:

“Has the culture finally and fully changed?”

For most people that question gets thought of in terms of whether the nation is still committed to “Christian values.”  Does it still believe in marriage, family, etc.  I do think there was a cultural question at the heart of the election, but I think it is on a much deeper level than stances on specific issues.

So deep was the question, so fundamental that it seemed like the two campaigns were talking past each other.  Romney ran a campaign of leadership and issues.  Obama ran a campaign that was about, well, Obama.  Romney sought to differentiate himself from Obama on the issues of the day.  Obama chose to paint himself as the “good guy” and Romney as the “bad guy.”  Team Obama pledged early that they would have to personalize the election because they knew they did not have the issues in their favor.  But there is something about Obama’s personality and how they executed the campaign that made this more than simply a political strategy.

The personal seems to deeply ingrained in all that Obama does, including his current governance.  The month of May, but five months into his second term, has seen Obama pretty much on the ropes.  Daniel Henninger:

Tuesday’s meandering mess of a news conference exposed that his first term’s permanent campaign—attempting to reframe all issues to maximize him and minimize his opposition—is going to be inappropriate for the only thing Mr. Obama has got now: a mere American presidency.

Whether Roosevelt, Nixon, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, every second-term president must in time come to grips with the reality that it can’t be about just his agenda or just him. It, the presidency, is unavoidably about offering clear leadership for all the American people and a watching, always unsettled world. If Barack Obama insists it’s about something else, everyone, including him, will have their bags packed for a long 40 months.

Peggy Noonan:

Republicans don’t oppose him any less after his re-election, and Democrats don’t seem to support him any more. This week he was reduced to giving a news conference in which he said he’s got juice, reports of his death are greatly exaggerated. It was bad. And he must be frustrated because he thinks he’s trying. He gives speeches, he gives interviews, he says words, but he doesn’t really rally people, doesn’t create a wave that breaks over the top of the Capitol Dome and drowns the opposition, or even dampens it for a moment.

Mr. Obama’s problem isn’t really the Republicans. It’s that he’s supposed to be popular. He’s supposed to have some sway, some pull and force. He was just re-elected. He’s supposed to have troops. “My bill is launched, unleash the hounds of war.” But nobody seems to be marching behind him. Why can’t he rally people and get them to press their congressmen and senators? I’m not talking about polls, where he hovers in the middle of the graph, but the ability to wield power.

I think the key phrase in all those words is Noonan’s, “Democrats don’t seem to support him any more.”  “I’m a good guy, he’s a bad guy,” is as old as politics.  What is so startlingly different about Obama more than any other preceding player of that game is that a) Obama did not set it aside when it came time to govern, and b) enough people bought it to re-elect him even after four years of non-governance.

These two factors were able to coalesce and function this time because of the rise of identity politics, and specifically the politics of race and religion.

Race has become the thing that no one wants to talk about, but everyone is thinking about fromt eh 2012 election, and the 2008 for that matter.  An important fact emerged just recently:

The Associated Press is out with a study of the 2012 election concluding that the black voter turnout rate exceeded the white turnout rate for the first time. It’s almost certainly true that black turnout was higher than white turnout last fall — but that also was true in 2008.

Using census data and exit polling, the AP found that black voters were 13 percent of the electorate even though they make up only 12 percent of the population. White voters represented 72 percent of the electorate, outperforming their 71.1 percent share of the population, but not to the same degree they have in past elections. The total percent of voters in each ethnic group who turned out is not included. Census data on voter turnout will be released in May.

Racial identity was a key player in this game – make no mistake.  And therefore it needs to be discussed.  The stats are out there, everybody knows them, they just are not discussed in polite company.  Although Michael Barone must be applauded for doing so recently in the pages of the Wall Street JournaL

What helped the Republicans more than redistricting was the tendency of Democratic voters to be clustered in black, Hispanic and “gentry liberal” neighborhoods in major metropolitan areas. This clustering has produced huge majorities that have made many large and medium-size states safely Democratic at the presidential level.

Even now I am hesitant to hit on this point too hard.  Rather, I am going to assume everybody more or less knows the story and I am going to comment on it.

The thing that is most disturbing about the role of racial identity in the elections of both 2008 and 2012 is how utterly racist it really was.  I am not just talking about the “reverse racism” of blacks voting for blacks because they are black.  Rather I am talking about that line from Noonan, “Democrats don’t seem to support him any more.”  Democrats, in  a significant part elected Barack Obama because he is black, but once they have accomplished that goal, they have abandoned him.  Part of that is his lack of leadership, but part of it is they fact that all they really cared about was that he was black, and once elected twice, they had made their point and moved on.  Is that not the deepest definition of racism? – When all you see is someone’s color?

This may backfire on them.  Said Peter Beinert recently:

The point is that liberals need to realize that Democrats aren’t immune from racism. In politics, bigotry isn’t always connected to ideology; sometimes it simply stems from opportunism. And with more minority Republicans seeking high office, Democrats will have more opportunities in the years to come. Dick Harpootlian’s slur against Nikki Haley offers liberals the chance to show that Democrats won’t get away with it.

Perhaps it is a trite point that the party which runs on civil rights so often is the most deeply racist, but it is here so clearly illustrated that it simply must be looked at.  But this too is an old story, race has been deeply ingrained in the politics of this nation almost since its founding.  From the North/South compromises of the Founding to the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement, race is a big part of who we are.  American is after all an attempt to forge a nation out of something different.  Prior to the United States, nations were accidents of geography and ethnicity.  We, for the first time tried to forge a nation from different stuff.  We tried to forge a nation out of ideas because we were virtually unlimited geographically and massively diverse ethnically.  It must be remembered that the small regional differences (both European and American) that now seem inconsequential to us were enormous gaps at that time.

Prior to the United States, nations formed around men.  A leader that rallied a group.  The United States on the other hand was to be “A nation of laws, not men.”  The QuotationsBook web site attributes this phrase to John Adams as follows:

JOHN ADAMS, Novanglus Papers, no. 7.The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, vol. 4, p. 106 .Adams published articles in 1774 in the Boston, Massachusetts, Gazette using the pseudonym Novanglus. In this paper he credited James Harrington with expressing the idea this way. Harrington described government as the empire of laws and not of men in his 1656 work, The Commonwealth of Oceana, p. 35 . The phrase gained wider currency when Adams used it in the Massachusetts Constitution, Bill of Rights, article 30 .Works, vol. 4, p. 230.

It seems the battle to maintain America is, at root, a battle to maintain this ideal.  Yet it is an ideal that even lefties like Beinart are beginning to see us abandon.  Such is the price of the politics that Obama chose to play in the general election of 2012.  But race was not the only identity factor that Obama played on in 2012.  There was also religion.  Obama in his “evolution” to the support of same-sex marriage, created a battle of the religious against the “non-religious” as a sub-text of the campaign.   A sub-text that rang the Mormon bell without having to overtly talk about it, thus not only energizing a good but of his base, but setting the Republican base at odds with itself.  But this is the topic for the next post or two in this series.

One thing that is very important to note here is that Obama was setting the tone of the campaign throughout.  Gov. Romney assumed, most of us believed rightly, that his competence would so outshine this sort of identity pandering that he would carry the day.  Clearly such was not the case.  That is a serious messaging problem – one that must be addressed by those far more adroit at such things than I.  I’ll focus on what I know best – religion and politics.

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