Jimmah's Back
One of the nice things about controlling Congress is that since you've got all the brass and woodwinds and drums you need, you can put on a show whenever you like--right there in your own committee hearing room.
And so it was, on a quiet afternoon last week, that former President Jimmy Carter appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to discuss "energy security" at the invitation of the new committee chairman, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.). The 84-year-old Carter seemed a little more stiff, and slightly more frail, than the last time THE SCRAPBOOK had seen him, but once he sat down, flashed his famous grin, and began to talk, it was clear that the fire still burns brightly within him.
The fire, that is, of envy and resentment. To be sure, there was something poignant about the loser of the 2004 presidential election (Kerry) lobbing softball questions in the direction of the loser of the 1980 presidential election (Carter), but there was very little about Carter's performance that could be described as "reflective" or "elegiac." More like mad as hell about the verdict of history and not willing to take it anymore.
Now, THE SCRAPBOOK concedes that losing a reelection campaign for the presidency must be difficult. But one would think that, after the passage of 29 years, the petty details of the footnotes to yesteryear would be mercifully forgotten.
Well, one would be wrong. "I dedicated solar collectors on the White House roof in 1979," Carter testified, "but the 32 panels were soon removed almost instantaneously after my successor moved into the White House." Note the (no doubt deliberate) unwillingness to furnish the name of that successor, along with the presumption that the first or second thing Ronald Reagan must have done upon taking office in January 1981 was to gleefully and "instantaneously" remove those 32 solar panels from the White House roof.
Carter continued: "When I became president the average gas mileage on a car was 12 miles per gallon"--take that, Gerald Ford!--"and we had mandated, by the time I went out of office, 27.5 miles per gallon. But President Reagan"--there, I said his name!--"and others didn't think that was important, and so it was frittered away."
Chairman Kerry, looking marginally more dolorous than usual, took that opportunity to pick up the theme, reminding committee colleagues that "President Carter had the courage, as president of the United States, to tell the truth to Americans about energy. . . . Regrettably, the ensuing years saw those efforts unfunded, stripped away." At which point Carter, Nobel peace laureate and Time's Best Ex-President, nodded thoughtfully in agreement.
Of course, this was standard Democratic boilerplate on a pair of issues: that Americans don't like to listen to hard truths, and prefer to be lulled by Great Communicators; and that solar panels on rooftops are the obvious answer to the energy needs of a nation of 300 million.
But it was also an example of the magical power of majority rule. Since Democrats are in command of both houses on Capitol Hill, and one Al Franken away from enjoying a filibuster-proof margin in the Senate, history may now be rewritten by act of Congress. Down the memory hole goes malaise, the Brezhnev hug, gasoline shortages and long lines at service stations, the Iran hostage crisis, double-digit inflation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Desert One, Salt II, Brother Billy, Sister Ruth and Larry Flynt, "inordinate fear of communism," the Bert Lance scandal, and the Mariel boatlift of Cuban criminals and mental patients.
Apparently, the Carter years (1977-81) were the unappreciated golden age in modern American history, followed by three decades of unfunding, frittering away, low gas mileage, easy truths, and the instantaneous dismantling of 32 solar energy panels.
Our Man Mitch?
Is Indiana's Mitch Daniels, the former head of George W. Bush's budget office, warming up for 2012? He says no ("I'm not a candidate for any office--now or ever again," Daniels wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week), but the approval/disapproval ratio for the 60-year-old governor, just beginning his second term, has reversed from 40/50 in the fall of 2007 to 69/29 this spring. And this past week, first in a commencement speech at Butler University and then in the aforementioned Journal article, Daniels limned a powerful critique of Barack Obama at a time when many of his fellow Republicans are unwilling to take on the popular young president. Here's Daniels at Butler:
We Boomers were the children that the Second World War was fought for. Parents who had endured both war and the Great Depression devoted themselves sacrificially to ensuring us a better life than they had. We were pampered in ways no children in human history would recognize. With minor exceptions, we have lived in blissfully fortunate times. . . . All our lives, it's been all about us. We were the "Me Generation." We wore T-shirts that said "If it feels good, do it." The year of my high school commencement, a hit song featured the immortal lyric "Sha, la, lalalala live for today." As a group, we have been self-centered, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and all too often just plain selfish. Our current Baby Boomer president has written two eloquent, erudite books, both about . . . himself.
And here he is in the Journal on Obama's proposed cap-and-trade tax:
I will confine myself to reporting about how all this looks from the receiving end of the taxes, restrictions and mandates Congress is now proposing. Quite simply, it looks like imperialism. This bill would impose enormous taxes and restrictions on free commerce by wealthy but faltering powers--California, Mass-achusetts and New York--seeking to exploit politically weaker colonies in order to prop up their own decaying economies. Because proceeds from their new taxes, levied mostly on us, will be spent on their social programs while negatively impacting our economy, we Hoosiers decline to submit meekly.
Maybe Daniels should reconsider that "now or ever."
Buy This Book
THE SCRAPBOOK is always pleased to see its friends produce a book--especially one on an important and interesting topic (China). The volume in question consists of lively and topical essays by first-rate writers well-known to WEEKLY STANDARD readers (Robert Kagan, Dan Blumenthal, Ellen Bork, and Nick Eberstadt, among others), edited by another person well-known to us as a contributor (and always a strong shower in the WEEKLY STANDARD NCAA pool), Gary Schmitt.
The Rise of China: Essays on the Future Competition is elegantly published by Encounter Books, and, we might add in these difficult times, reasonably priced at $21.95. Buy it.
What If Richard Cohen's Right?
It's not often that we find ourselves in agreement with liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen. But we were intrigued by his most recent column, "What if Cheney's Right?" As in, what if "enhanced interrogation techniques" have in fact saved lives? First, he describes those on the left who insist such measures do not work as "seem[ing] to think that the CIA tortured suspected terrorists just for the hell of it." We couldn't have described them better.
Cohen is pushing for the release of memos the former vice president says will show the efficacy of waterboarding. "After all, this is not merely some political catfight conducted by bloggers, although it is a bit of that, too. Inescapably, it is about life and death--not ideology, but people hurling themselves from the burning World Trade Center." At which point we double-checked the byline to make sure it still said Richard Cohen.
By now, the column has been inundated by thousands of angry online comments, which Cohen no doubt anticipated. But he stands his ground: "The Obama administration ought to call Cheney's bluff, if it is that, and release the memos. If even a stopped clock is right twice a day, this could be Cheney's time."
We feel exactly the same about Richard Cohen.