DECISION POINTS I

By William Urban

The title of George W. Bush’s memoirs tell much about the contents. Instead of rambling on about second grade teachers and such, he read a number of autobiographies and chose a format that concentrated on key moments in his presidency. This allowed him to pick and choose the subjects to write about, thereby avoiding altogether matters such as whether Clinton staffers had torn all the W letters out of the computer keyboards, a petty insult that he told his staffers to ignore. There were many such exasperating moments, but they did not bother him until the last years of his presidency. That’s politics, he said, get used to it.
And yes, he can read. He had a contest with Karl Rove to see who read the most, counting pages and contents, not just titles. I’m sure, too, that he wrote this book himself, though probably with some help in digging out old speeches. U.S. Grant was his model. That was a good choice. Grant, too, went from very popular to being universally criticized, then to being admired again. In Grant’s case, the historians waited until the slaughter of the Great War to call him the Butcher; in contrast, Dan Rather readily believed falsified military service records to call Bush a draft dodger.
He had hoped to be the first president not to veto a bill, an ambition he does not mention here, but one he held to for five years. But after the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress, they delighted in sending him bills that he had veto; the bills made sense to the more energized wing of the party, but the rest of the Democrats went along just to annoy the president. This frustrated him greatly, since he passionately believed that the parties should work together for the good of the country — as they had done for educational reform and changes to Medicare — but later it was nothing but “Bush lied, people died.”
He spent one chapter on the Iraq war, which at the time of his writing (2010) he thought was entirely justified because it had resulted in a democratic Iraq, with Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds working together. When he left office Iraq was essentially at peace, there was hope for an agreement for stationing some American troops as trainers and a ready response force, and so forth. All that vanished in the next year, and it will be a long time before historians can get past their political biases to judge fairly the ups and downs of American policy there. Even now, Bush speaking of the “liberation” of Iraq makes sense only to those who remember what Saddam Hussein was like and why everyone considered him dangerous.
I listened to Bush’s memoir on an audio book from the Warren County Library. It was never dull. The reader caught Bush’s accent and cadence right down to mispronouncing names. He also caught Bush’s passion about religion, about legislation and his frustration with foreign leaders and Congress.
Bush truly believed that investing Social Security contributions in stocks and bonds would be good for most retirees, especially for Blacks, who would be able to pass along that money on to their children. As it was, with an average shorter life-span, Blacks were collecting less from traditional Social Security than they would have from an investment. But he couldn’t even get Republicans on board. There was too much suspicion of Wall Street.
His last chapter was on the Housing Boom and Collapse. He hadn’t seen it coming. Nor had anyone else. Nor did anyone have a suggestion for how to deal with it painlessly. TARP — buying up the bad loans and bailing out companies — was distasteful, but so was the prospect of paralyzing the banking industry. Everybody depended on banks. He couldn’t let them collapse.
Similarly, everyone who read the intelligence reports on Saddam Hussein concluded that he had to go. In 1998 Bill Clinton got congressional approval to remove him; in 2003 Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were persuaded (“I voted for the war before I voted against it.”) that only war would get rid of him; and all the western intelligence agencies agreed that Saddam Hussein had not gotten rid of his chemical weapons and that he was supporting terrorists all across the Middle East.
For a decade now liberal orthodoxy has all but declared Bush a war criminal. This was nowhere more obvious that in the Norwegian committee that awarded Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing more than not being George W Bush. No, that’s an exaggeration. He promised to do everything differently, and he has lived up to that.
Now this is clearly changing. In a recent article in the New York Review of Books Bush comes across as a principled, independent leader who was not the puppet of Dick Cheney. The NYRB! Not so long ago even its reviews of poetry would end with denunciations of George W Bush.
Other evidence is the disenchantment with President Obama having continued some unpopular Bush policies — Guantanamo, NSA surveillance, drones — and having expanded others. The stock market is soaring, benefiting the top 1% greatly (and those of us with retirement accounts), interest rates are low, benefiting those who want to borrow (but not those of us with bank accounts), and Bush remains out of the spotlight, not calling attention to himself in visiting veterans hospitals.

Al Gore has also vanished from political events, showing up only at Environmental Conferences. He, too, had gotten the Nobel Prize partly for not being George W Bush, partly for a disaster horror film, but no Democrat wants to share a podium with him. No one under thirty knows what “Tipper was right” means.
As a result, those under thirty should understand that this book does not describe your parents’ George W. Bush. As 9/11 fades from our memory and the Arab Spring turns into Winter, even the consensus on Afghanistan and Iraq is changing. This is inevitable. As time passes, our understanding the past and our appreciation of the personalities changes. Keeping up with this seems impossible until all at once we say about the revised history, “that seems right.”
We are not at that point yet, but the public no longer believes claims by the Obama administration that its problems are the legacy of George W. Bush.

Review-Atlas (May 29, 2014), 4.

NO HIGHER HONOR

By William Urban

A couple weeks ago I mentioned Condoleezza Rice’s account of her years as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State for George W. Bush, 2000-2008. Her remarks on the people and problems she dealt with are especially illuminating in view of the current troubles of John Kerry, who took office just as American foreign policy was falling apart.

It was close to that bad in Rice’s last year. There was an uprising in Iraq — the Shiites had been beaten back earlier, but they were still murdering Sunnis in Baghdad; the Sunnis had effectively taken the western half of the country and had begun murdering Shiites in Baghdad. The Iranians were processing uranium for an atomic bomb. The Palestinians were attacking Israelis at every opportunity and the Israelis were striking back. North Korea had just exploded an atomic bomb and had tested a long-range missile. Vladimir Putin was beginning to test American resolve. And our European allies had concluded that the world would be safer if Americans just went home (except not quite yet, as they’d explain every time a step was taken in that direction).

The surge that turned Iraq from a defeat to a victory was no easy decision. Congress, then controlled by Democrats, wanted an immediate pull-out. Harry Reid pronounced the war lost. Our allies concurred. And so did some high-ranking military officials, and many in the diplomatic corps..

Bush sent in the troops anyway and approved a new policy designed by General Petraeus. The basic thought was to have boots on the ground, first to defeat the insurgents, then to protect civilians. There was a new emphasis on working with Iraqis, most importantly with the Sunni tribal sheiks who were fed up with al Qaida arrogance and abuse. The level of violence fell steadily until by the time Bush left office the most important task remaining was to sign a status of forces agreement that would define the working arrangement and protect American servicemen from arbitrary arrest and punishment.

Well, the Obama administration didn’t get that done, but much of the fault lay with the Iraqis. Rice was very frustrated with their leaders, and with the Saudis and Iranians who encouraged the civil unrest. Not only were these men difficult to deal with, but some would not talk to a woman, not even one who was America’s Secretary of State. She used some blunt words to bring some of them around.

Others she won over with stories of growing up in the South, and how she understood what Arab women and children were going through.

The North Koreans, in contrast, could not even be talked to. She used the term “hermit kingdom” to describe the nation whose leaders were totally ignorant of the outside world. But here, at least, there some allies agreed as to what had to be done. (Not, alas, the Russians and Chinese.) The Clinton policy of shipping grain in return for promises to think about eliminating nuclear weapons and inter-continental missiles was over. George W. Bush installed an anti-missile system in Alaska and aboard some naval vessels. American liberals howled, the North Koreans pouted, and Europeans thought this was another sign of American cowboy politics.

Shortly afterward, when the Iranians developed a missile that could reach Western Europe, Bush put a similar system in Poland and the Czech Republic that might be able to shoot down a handful of missiles. Vladimir Putin proclaimed this a threat to his 1000+ intercontinental missiles, but Bush pointed out that this was hardly the case. Not long afterward, Barack Obama withdrew the anti-missile system as a gesture of friendship toward Russia and Iran; he did not dismantle the Alaskan site, which may explain why the North Korean leader recently called Obama “a wicked black monkey.”

Rice had some success in developing a system of sanctions on the Iranians. But here too the Russians and Chinese refused to cooperate. As a result, it was left to Barack Obama to push through a more effective program — one that he abandoned just as it showed signs of effectiveness, in return for Iranian promises to slow down the enrichment of nuclear materials.

She had moments that she enjoyed. Working with Tony Blair was always a joy. Angela Merkel was friendly, too — quite a contrast to her two-faced predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, who after losing the election quickly took a job with the Russian oil and gas conglomerate that today can cut off European energy instantly.

Her golf game improved, thanks to coaching by Tiger Woods, then at the height of his popularity, but she had almost no time to practice. She occasionally played the piano at formal events, which always astounded heads of states. The king of Saudi Arabia presented her with an ornate hijab, a beautiful outfit, but she had to bite her lip not to say that she associated it with the exclusion of Muslim women from the male worlds of business and politics. She did not wear it because she was the American Secretary of State and she thought it appropriate to dress in the American fashion. (She did love to wear red gowns and dance late into the night — that is, 1 AM. She had to get up the next day and work. Her job was twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.)

I suppose in a few years we’ll have a memoir by the Black woman who is Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor. Since her last name is Rice, too, we’ll have to refer to them as Condi and Susan. Condi’s the one who didn’t say that a video was responsible for Benghazi; Susan’s the one who is not fluent in Russian.

The basic problems have not changed except to become more complex and more violent. Rice worried that she had too little time to deal with problems that needed her attention — South America, for example — and Africa (where George Bush was wildly popular for his campaigns against disease.) Barack Obama tried to deal with this problem by assigning prominent diplomats to the most critical areas, giving them so much authority that they were widely called czars. That is why Hillary Clinton failed to achieve much as Secretary of State. She didn’t have a chance.

As for Rice, when she was a girl in segregated Birmingham, she had never imagined ever holding such an office. This was reflected in the title of her book, No Higher Honor.

Review Atlas (May 22, 2014), 4.

BABY, IT’S HOT OUTSIDE

By William Urban

President Obama has announced that Climate Change is the greatest problem facing our nation and the world. Not many people here or over there agree — we have problems here and out there that are immediately important, and therefore grab our attention, but who can disagree with a president who has had such splendid successes with the economy, foreign policy and health care? He’s on a roll and his time in office is running out.

Worse for him, fewer and fewer Americans are buying the Global Warming argument that underlies the panic. Partly this is because fewer people trust the UN, many mistrust this administration, and some don’t even trust moderate Republicans.

Religions and political movements prosper best when they have an inspiring leader. In 2008 this was Barack Obama, but Hope and Change did not tell us much about his environmental agenda. Even four years later we still didn’t appreciate how deeply committed he was to closing down coal and oil. It was like his whispered comment to President Medvedev of Russia, “Tell Vladimir I can be more flexible after the election.” The economic impact of his plans is only now becoming apparent. Rhetoric was always his strongest point, but good speeches will not power the air-conditioner or the electric car that will eventually supplant the hybrids that has not yet replaced the conventional automobile.

How is Climate Change a religion? First of all, it is a belief system that stands independently of facts. If the recorded temperatures remain flat in spite of ever higher CO2 levels, it must be because the heat is hiding somewhere. If Michael Mann’s hockey stick was historically inaccurate, it still demonstrated a higher truth; if Mann would not share his data with other scientists, that was to prevent them from using his research to undermine his thesis that temperatures would soar, and soar quickly. If Michael Mann’s emails demonstrated that he tried to suppress dissenting ideas, then criticism should be directed at the hacker who broke into his system.

College and university scientists remind students that science is based on concepts that are continually tested and retested. That is, a theory is a theory, and scientists are constantly challenging whatever we believe at the moment. A case in point in the recent contention that fats are not bad for you. That is, our bodies need protein, carbohydrates and fats, but only carbs will add to that tire around our middles. The gluten-free movement had already stumbled onto this, but without the statistical proof. Now it looks as though you can enjoy that hamburger as much as you want, as long as you don’t eat the bun.

Will this theory last long? Not if recent experience is any model. But more important than the health benefits is the public concluding that scientists don’t know any more about what they are talking about than they do.

This isn’t true, of course, but anyone who remembers the actors portraying doctors smoking and recommending one cigarette over the others will recall that back then scientists were the next thing to God. Higher, perhaps, even, if He even existed. (There are still quite a few folks who think Ph.D should be spelled Go.D.)

The religion of Climate Change has a philosophy that anyone familiar with St. Augustine or Calvin will recognize, which is that humans are basically no damn good. Human beings will mess up everything — themselves, their societies, their environment — and even the best intentions and best efforts will be ineffective in achieving salvation. The UN report on Climate Change confirms this. Even if we stop polluting right now, the temperature will continue to rise, and nothing we do can turn it around.

We might slow it a bit in years to come, but the fact that the US has been working on pollution for decades is ignored. US output of CO2 has fallen recently and is now back at 1992 levels. That is according to Mother Jones magazine, a publication hardly in the pocket of the Koch brothers who are blamed for all of America’s ills, but especially coal mining.

Predestination, one of the central pillars of Calvin’s theology, never prevented his followers from trying to do God’s work. We see this in their tireless efforts to abolish slavery, to promote women’s rights, to eliminate slums and reduce poverty, and by passing strong laws, to stop smoking, drug use and alcohol abuse. Calvinists strongly endorsed education, which is why when local Presbyterians founded Monmouth College, they insisted that it offer a first-class educational program. They were also tolerant (the first Black applicant was admitted, the first Asian applicant, the first Roman Catholic, and presumably the first atheist) and discussions about scientific truths were encouraged. Back in the nineteenth century President J.B. McMichael announced that he saw no conflict between evolution and religion, thus avoiding the nasty debates that tore many colleges and universities into angry factions.

In contrast to this open-mindedness, those who believe in Climate Change insist that the warming trend is “settled science” and call skeptics “deniers.” This is truly the triumph of belief over the scientific method.

Will it be hot this summer? Probably. I remember last August as blistering, while. June was pretty nice. But that was just my bad memory. The State Climatologist reports; August was dry, but normal temperatures; September was very hot and dry. That confirms that I, like everyone else, tend to remember facts that reinforce my beliefs, not those which undermine them. For the year 2013, in spite of a warm January, Illinois was five degrees cooler than 2012, and had more rainfall.

None of this will discourage Climate Change enthusiasts from saying that human beings have been evil and that we deserve what we will get.

Climate change is occurring, of course. In the 1830s and 1840s Louis Agassiz demonstrated that the earth had experienced an Ice Age. This ran against the Bible, but Christians came to accept it. Today Climate Change is a religion for atheists. Is that an improvement?

Review Atlas (May 15, 2014), 4.

THE BUDGET AS AN ATM

By William Urban

It is amazing: Republicans complained for years that President Obama did not present a budget — as the Constitution requires. Then this year they were unhappy because the president’s budget read like a campaign speech; it was, in fact, a wish list of progressive dreams., much as the State of the Union address has become.
We expected the Republican-dominated House to reject it, but not by 413-2! Not even Democrats wanted to run for re-election on this budget. Why did the president send this up? It makes even his foreign policy seen coherent.
I have to think of this kind of budget as an ATM without a withdrawal limit. You know, you just punch in a number and the money pours out. But when I think of this, I remember Barack Obama’s 2011 interview with NBC,: “There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers.” That is, “when you go to a bank you use the ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport and you use a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.” What he was trying to say was that when technology speeds up production or service, people lose their jobs.
The name for this attitude in Luddite, which reflects the 18th century English weavers who destroyed machines that were producing more and better cloth at much less cost than when could do. Consumers everywhere benefited, but the workers blamed the bosses. Even then making money was evil.
Losing jobs is hard, yes, but I remember when telephone operators used to plug in calls, and long distance meant multiple telephone operators plugging in the connections. This wasn’t always bad. I remember calling my former roommate in Texas, and when he didn’t pick up, the operator suggested asking the person in the next apartment where he was. Eventually, we found him.
That was nice, but I think few people actually want to go back to that. It’s so much easier to pick up the cell phone and leave a message, or, if we are able to do what the NSA does, just check the GPS of the phone and see where it is located. Parents can do this now, I understand, and stray dogs can be quickly found.
As for the ATM, I really like the little machines, especially when travelling. I don’t even have to present a photo ID, which I do when cashing a check in some distant community. It’s easier than voting.
There must be a moral in here somewhere. Maybe, if we only allowed the federal government or Springfield to spend money only during working hours six days a week, we’d cut the deficit? Fat chance of that in Illinois, where the legislature recently failed once again to do anything more with the deficit than paper over the pension programs. And now there is a rush to pay for the Chicago pensions before the Republicans get enough votes to block a give-away bill or even elect a governor with a veto. Even Dick Durbin is nervous about re-election, he says, though I tend to believe in the theory that the candidate with the shortest name usually wins, or, often, the tallest candidate.
John Ransom recently wrote a little ditty about our problem:
Oh, the irony.
We voted for Hope and Change.
And we got Illinois.
It happens every time.
Some of this Illinois deficit is union-driven. Not all, of course, but Peter Seller’s award-winning 1959 film, I’m All Right, Jack, comes to mind here As does the rest of the statement — I’ve Got Mine. In the movie neither the employers nor the unions came out looking good, but with the British government having imposed a socialist system on the country, with the unions getting pretty much what they wanted, the unions got the blame for the economic stagnation that eventually brought Maggie Thatcher to power. Britain has prospered ever since. And the ATM machine is by far the best way to convert dollars to pounds, and the traveller does not even have to carry cash or travellers’ checks with him.
I love the ATM when I visit Britain, but I wish that my withdrawal limit was not determined by the amount of money in my local bank account. I have a limit designed to prevent unauthorized use of card — if it was stolen — so that my account cannot be easily drained. But in real life politics none of this is necessary. No government would ever spend recklessly, would it? And everyone is honest. Isn’t that so?
Illinois is a marvelous state, despite the recent poll that suggests half the population would like to move away. We recently read that social security payments were still going to deceased people. That came as a surprise. We knew that the dead could vote, but not that they could continue to receive their retirement benefits.

Review Atlas (May 8, 2014), 4.