Author Archives: Rabbi

      It has become increasingly clear over the years, and not just in the left’s horrified reaction to President Obama’s sullen and dreary debate performance, that Obama is our first Affirmative Action president. This is not intended as a comment on his race, although invariably some will construe it as that (the price we pay for the hypersensitivity engendered by political correctness), but rather on the revelation that he has benefited handsomely from some of the ramifications of affirmative action – in particular, being graded on a curve.

     Of course, it is quite possible that Obama benefited from affirmative action in the traditional way. All of his college and graduate applications and grades (from Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law) are held under tight seal, guarded as state secrets with a vigilance not shown to, say, the identities of Pakistanis who aided US intelligence in uncovering bin Laden’s whereabouts. No other president has been shown such deference. President George W. Bush’s college transcripts were released to a media ready to pounce on his supposed dimwittedness, only to be rebuffed when it turned out that Bush’s Grade Point Average was higher than that of either Al Gore or John Kerry.

    Clearly, something is being hidden. Did his grades fall short of what his reputation for brilliance demand? Did he apply to college as a foreigner – Indonesian, Kenyan, Muslim et al? Were his SAT or LSAT scores so far below the standard admission requirement that he was obviously accepted under the separate track of affirmative action? Did he become Editor of the Harvard Law Review under similar circumstances – with the additional bizarre fact that he, in contrast to most editors or law review members, never published anything?  We’ll probably never know, and nor does it really matter that much.

    What matters more is the kid glove treatment Obama has received from the public and the media, consciously or unconsciously evoking the “soft bigotry of low expectations” lamented by President Bush. Obama never had his qualifications for the presidency judged by the public as is normally done; he “transcended” such evaluations. For all the criticism lodged by the media (and Obama) against Mitt Romney’s alleged “lack of specificity” – an untruth, in any event – such a charge is ironic coming from the man who ran four years ago on “hope and change” and little else.

     Affirmative action beneficiaries essentially live in the past; they are rewarded because of historical acts of injustice that occurred before their time to the race or class or sex. They get to blame the past for any present shortcomings. Does that sound familiar? Every Obama failure is tied to “the mess I inherited,” an open-ended excuse that is simply accepted by his acolytes despite its shallowness. Every president inherits someone’s mess (FDR – Hoover’s Depression, which he promptly worsened; Truman – the wars in Europe and Asia; Eisenhower – Truman’s war in Korea; JFK – Eisenhower’s Bay of Pigs invasion plan – for which he had the decency and maturity never to blame Eisenhower; Nixon – Johnson’s Vietnam; Reagan – Carter’s frightful economy; Bush II – Clinton’s recession that began in March 2000 with the tech collapse, as well as an ascendant bin Laden who was never taken seriously by Clinton.). In today’s climate, it is considered rude to point that out – as if to say, we should not have the same expectations of this president as we have of all the others.

    Nor is he expected to live up to the promises he made and broke; nor is he challenged on his failures. He has been the most inaccessible president in recent memory, despite his ubiquity on television. He speaks to controlled audiences, rarely gives press conferences, and even then hand-picks journalists from obscure publications who toss him softball questions. No follow-ups are allowed. Somewhere, Sam Donaldson must be cringing.

Pronouncements are accepted wholesale, as too-probing questions might put the candidate in a bad light. “The war in Iraq has ended” – but tell that to the Iraqi people, about 100 of whom are killed weekly in a country that is rapidly falling under Iranian hegemony. “The shovel ready projects weren’t really shovel ready,” ha ha ha – a waste of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. “The attack on the Benghazi consulate was not a terrorist attack…was a terrorist attack…” – obvious dissembling that has been ignored or parried. (Note that Obama immediately said he must wait until the FBI concludes their investigation, and that they were on the scene right after the attack – a clear falsehood, as the FBI did not go to Benghazi until this week.) “The wealthy must pay their fair share” – mindless of the fact that if the millionaires and billionaires were taxed at a rate of 100% (meaning all their annual income was confiscated), Obama’s budget is still a half-trillion dollars in the red. “I plan on hiring 100,000 math and science teachers”- a blatant payoff to the teachers’ union, big Obama supporters. But why 100,000 and not 90,000 or 110,000? Are there that many people capable of teaching math and science looking for jobs? And does the federal government hire any teachers? Of course not – that is a state responsibility. All this means is that more federal money will be printed to provide to the states where Democrats are in the majority.

These contentions are simply accepted by a defanged media. But refuted in debate by the Stormin’ Mormon (Neil Cavuto’s delightful phrase), Obama sulked rather than responded.

“Being graded on a curve” means that expectations are lowered, that the individual in question cannot truly compete on an even playing field, and therefore allowances must be made. Obama’s associations with an assortment of rogues, scoundrels, and terrorists – fatal for ordinary politicians – were glossed over. Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded without any substantive achievement – essentially just for showing up. Habits that would be mocked in mainstream politicians, judged according to the traditional rules – like Obama affecting a variety of accents to pander to different audiences – are simply ignored. It is as if it would be unfair to treat him the same as others are treated, as if it would be insulting to measure him by the same yardstick used for others. Less is expected, and his excuses are given a plausibility that would be unacceptable in any other context.

Watching Romney in debate was seeing what hasn’t been seen in years – an intelligent politician, fully in command of facts and material, and able to convey both in crisp, articulate and understandable English. Obama off his teleprompter is, sadly, embarrassing. He received a tutorial – like from a master teacher to a struggling student – not only in debate tactics, but in government, management, leadership and the issues. Forced to confront questions he had been able to dodge for years, and to speak directly to an equal – if not a superior – who did not accept his fluff, platitudes and lies, Obama cowered, with a surliness that belied his likable image.

With the qualifications of both men on display simultaneously – a reference not to debating techniques but simple familiarity with the concerns of the day and viable ways of dealing with them – it is hard to escape the conclusion that Obama was elected based on the affirmative action preferential treatment that is anathema to most Americans and whose legitimacy in higher education will again be litigated before the US Supreme Court this coming term.

One is reminded that the drop-out rate after one year among affirmative-action college and graduate students far exceeds that of students admitted under traditional standards. One can only hope that a similar result befalls Obama after his one term, with the growing realization that he is simply not in Mitt Romney’s league. (That Paul Ryan will make Joe Biden look like a befuddled old man only strengthens the argument.) For the first time, Obama is confronting a figure who is not extending favorable treatment, not grading him on a curve, and not treating him like a victim of class and circumstances.

To be clear, Obama’s incompetence is not at all based on his race, and there are any number of blacks, Hispanics, women and even Jews who are qualified for the presidency based on customary standards. But Obama has benefited from preferential treatment in politics and elsewhere, and it shows.

By no means is the election over, and the potential for dirty politics, vindictive personal attacks and distractions from the real issues remains – as well as Obama’s main ploy: the lure of free stuff to be dispensed to his favored interest groups at the expense of the rest of the country. But the contrast between what we have and what we could have (and what we could have had in 2008) is jarring.

It is high time we judge all people by their qualifications, the content of their character, and their competence – and not by their superficial characteristics that are ultimately meaningless.

How even and unpredictable is the presidential election? Consider this: Barack Obama’s approval ratings are lower than that of any incumbent president who has been re-elected, but higher than any incumbent president who has been defeated for re-election. No incumbent has been re-elected with a lower winning percentage than in his first election, but Obama –if he wins, still unlikely – will likely be the first to achieve that dubious feat – garnering fewer votes but still winning re-election. He is right on the cusp, which points to his ineffectiveness as president but success as campaigner.

It is still Mitt Romney’s election to lose. No president with Obama’s economic record and foreign policy failures has ever been re-elected, but Romney needs to hammer home several essential points that will defuse Obama’s relentless recitation of meaningless clichés. Debates are an odd format in which to judge presidential timber, as presidents are rarely if ever called on to debate anyone. It is not something they need to have in their tool box, except insofar as it is necessary to connect with an electorate honed on entertainment rather than policy. In short, Romney needs to get tough while remaining pleasant, a little less Mormon-nice and a little more New York.

Therefore, I offer these choice rebuttals to the Obama chestnuts.

Obama:  “I inherited a mess.”

Romney: “Yes, and you made it worse, not better.  Ronald Reagan inherited a bigger mess (20% interest rates, 10% inflation) but he made it better, catapulting the economy to 25 years of economic growth. I want to adopt similar policies.”

Obama: “My opponent’s policies are the same ones that got us into this mess in the first place.”

Romney:  “Not at all. But when you inherited the mess, you made these mistakes – A,B,C,D. You spent money you didn’t have, you pursued an ideological agenda that spent even more money we don’t have, you introduced more instability into the financial system and have depressed investment. No wonder no one is hiring. You made these mistakes – amateurish mistakes – because you have no business experience. You have never run a business in your life and it shows. In the real world, a failing company cannot just print six trillion dollars to bail itself out.

   You didn’t allow failing businesses to be properly reconstructed but intervened in such a way that investors lost while your union buddies received their payoffs. You spent hundreds of billions of dollars on “shovel ready projects” that you laughed off “were not really shovel ready.” There is nothing funny about that, nothing worthy of laughter. That was not your money, that was the hard-earned money of taxpayers. See, you have never run a business and never really worked in the private sector. In the real world, when you lose money, you are losing your money, not someone else’s money, so you’re more careful. You don’t respect the private sector –you just see it as a cash cow that allows you to re-distribute money from the productive to the unproductive, or pursue quixotic quests like Solyndra. Big joke! Another half-trillion dollars – hard earned taxpayer money – down the drain.

    You spent all this money and have nothing to show for it.

    If I had been President in 2009, I would have cut taxes for private businesses and provided tax credits for the first year’s wages to new employees. That would have stimulated growth and jobs. I would have enabled the productive to be more productive by not consuming their work time with compliance with ever increasing paperwork and new regulations. Only the private sector creates jobs that build the economy. You claim you created 5 million new jobs. Please explain exactly what you did to create those jobs. What policies did you pursue to create those jobs? Paying taxpayer money to keep construction crews working – when the money has to be borrowed – creates nothing. It is more reminiscent of Milton Friedman’s whimsical suggestion for “government sponsored full employment:” pay half the people to dig holes, and the other half to fill the holes. Voila! Full employment.

    You are crushing the private sector, and because you have no business experience, you don’t even know it.”

     Obama: “Yes, but I inherited an economy that was the worst since the Great Depression.”

Romney: “Mr. President, with all due respect, blaming your predecessor for everything is not a policy. It’s just whining. Every president inherits problems. That is why he runs for president. I will inherit your mess. But rather than focus every day of my administration on re-election and catering to special interest groups, I will stimulate the economy through targeted tax cuts, unleash the private sector to create jobs and begin an era of American recovery and dominance. You are crushing America’s spirit by waging class warfare and minimizing our true potential. You are crushing America’s spirit by boasting about how many more people receive food stamps, thanks to you, and how many more people receive government assistance, thanks to you. I hope to boast about how many Americans I helped make independent and self-sufficient, how many families remained intact.”

    Obama: “The Republican Congress has blocked all my initiative that would have saved the day.”

Romney: “Sir, even you are aware that for the first two years of your term, Congress was controlled by Democrats with overwhelming majorities. You failed to pursue any meaningful policies that the Democrat Congress could have adopted to jump start the economy. Instead, you squandered your majority by passing a mammoth and wildly unpopular government takeover of the health care system. You and your Democrat Congress have not even submitted a budget in years – how’s that for injecting uncertainty into the business world ? Didn’t you promise your government would be the most transparent ever? It is the least – no one even knows what it is in the budget because you never produce one. That is shameful incompetence. No business could succeed that way – but how would you know? You have never run a business, and it shows.

   It is true that since the people rebelled against your incompetence 2010 and elected a Republican House with which you have been unable to find any common ground. But that is another failure as president. You are president, not dictator. In my state of Massachusetts, I had to cooperate with a Democratic legislature. We compromised, we found common ground. If you can’t, it is another sign of failed leadership and a failed presidency.

     There will likely be a Republican House again and maybe even a Republican Senate. Will you continue to use that as an excuse for inaction if you are re-elected? Probably, and that’s another reason why you should not be re-elected.”

   Obama: “Fortunately, we have turned the corner, and everything is looking up, so let’s look forward.”

Romney: “Actually, everything is worse since you took over. The deficit has skyrocketed to unimaginable levels, unemployment remains stubbornly high and unacceptable, gasoline prices have doubled – do you hear me? Doubled! – since you took office, and yet you are still strangling domestic oil production. You lament our reliance on Mideast oil, but you stubbornly refuse to permit oil exploration in Alaska and unconscionably have refused to allow the construction of the Keystone pipeline that will create thousands of jobs and bring us good Canadian – not Saudi – crude oil. That’s outrageous!

    You were against the extraction of shale oil but couldn’t stop it – so you claimed credit for it!  You have stopped offshore domestic oil drilling but you are subsidizing – with hard-earned taxpayer money – the Brazilians to drill for oil off their coast. Whose president are you?”

    Obama: “My opponent just wants to give more tax breaks to his rich friends.”

Romney: “”You know what you are saying is false, and yet you keep saying it. I want to cut tax rates for everyone – everyone. Naturally, this might sound complicated to Democrats, but you can’t cut taxes for people who don’t pay taxes. That should be easy to follow. They can’t pay less than zero. Cutting tax rates – especially capital gains tax rate – has always increased revenues, not decreased them. More people invest, more people spend, more people are hired and more people work. You know that. You even said once that you know that but fairness is more important than stimulating the economy. But there is nothing fair about taking someone’s money and giving it to someone else. I believe in charity. I give more in charity than I pay in taxes – and that is how it should be.

    Perhaps had you actually worked a day in your life in the private sector you would realize this. The good news is that come November, with the people’s help, you will be dispatched to the private sector. Trust me, you will benefit greatly from my policies, as will the country.”

If Mitt Romney can articulate these themes, the election is his to win. And we will all prosper.