Hillary Clinton: A Role Model for Girls. Period

Hillary Rodham Clinton stands poised to make history and shatter, what she aptly called, the 'hardest glass ceiling' by becoming the first woman president of United States and yet women voters have not only been lukewarm to her candidacy but many even consider her in terms that are no less sexist than her male detractors, of whom there are legions. Sexism is a state of mind and has little to do with the gender of the detractor.

A group of women professionals shared a photograph of first ladies, current and former, and went gaga over Michelle Obama while omitting any mention of Hillary Clinton. These professionals, incidentally, also want to encourage, through mentorship, other women to aspire and achieve professional success which they feel needs training to surmount the odds of the working place where women are still seen as less than equals. Asked "what about Clinton" the response was "the jury is still out". This is stunning sexism and would be called out as such if a male had said it. Michelle Obama is a charismatic first lady and remains a traditional first lady espousing non-controversial feel good causes like combating obesity, a national epidemic, with feel good initiatives like growing a vegetable garden in the White House and by exhorting people to exercise more. On the other hand there's Hillary Rodham Clinton, former first lady, first woman senator from New York, first woman to win primaries in a major party, first woman nominee of a major party and former secretary of state. How could a group of strong willed independent minded women, especially those who run a group meant to promote women leadership, ignore Clinton and hold Obama higher? Sexism, albeit of a different kind from the readily recognizable one by males.

Whether it is 2008 or 2016 women in the democratic primaries did not flock to Clinton but they backed Obama and Sanders enthusiastically. In both cases Clinton was seen as not "progressive" enough compared to her rivals. This is not the place to litigate the merits or demerits of those arguments.

The Lady in the Pant Suit. Image courtesy http://cdn-img.instyle.com/sites/default/files/styles/622x350/public/images/2015/06/061715-hillary-clinton-pantsuits-lead.jpg?itok=LI0CvZMq

Lost in the din was the fact that while Clinton got no favors for being a candidate who could make history. She was rather held to a different standard, mostly because the candidate was Hillary Clinton and almost as frequently because it was a woman candidate.

Clinton has been in the national public eye for over 20 years since her husband got elected as president in 1992 and yet it was not until this year did the media unearth a little spoken of speech delivered by her in 1969. Clinton led a group of students and demanded from the dean of Wellesley that a student representative should be allowed to give a speech during Commencement. Clinton herself was the chosen speaker. Echoing FDR she said "Fear is always with us but we just don't have the time for it now. Not now". In her speech Clinton passionately spoke of poverty, student diversity and most importantly, rather shocking  to some, rebuked a sitting senator who was the Commencement speaker. Senator Edward Brooke, first African-American elected to the senate, cautioned against "coercive protests" in his speech. Clinton, ad libbed extemporaneous remarks to say "Part of the problem with just empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn't do us anything" and she went on to say, in words that a Obama or a Sanders would later use, "for too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible. And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible". A young girl changed tradition at a hoary university and went beyond just rising up to the occasion and verbally dueled with a senator.

In 1995 Clinton gave a rousing classically feminist speech in Beijing that told the world "women's rights are human rights". It was, given the fragile state of US-China relations at that time, a gutsy speech and one that inspired many women.

"Women's Rights Are Human Rights" -- Hillary Clinton in UN Conference at Beijing in 1995

Today voters remember the Whitewater investigation, more appropriately it should be called witch hunt, as the start of the perpetual air of suspicion that would always hover above Hillary. What is less remember or completely unknown is Hillary redefined the role of a spouse of a politician in office. Not since Eleanor Roosevelt had a politician's spouse played a pivotal role in the administration. Whether as first lady of Arkansas or of the nation Hillary lived up to the promise of Bill, "two for the price of one". In Arkansas Hillary chaired the Education Standards Committee that literally reformed Arkansas schools to make them one of the nation's best from what used to be one of the worst.

Hillary Clinton and her campaign have not done a good job of introducing her to the voters. Bill Clinton's speech about his wife in the Democratic convention provided a sweeping view of the person Hillary was. As a Yale student Hillary involved herself in laws regarding child abuse, migrant labor and legal assistance for the poor.  She went on to write an oft cited article in Harvard Law Review titled "Children under the law".

When Bill Clinton lost the 1982 gubernatorial election he became, as he joked, 'the youngest ex-governor'. Hillary worked to get him rehabilitated and in response to suggestion that her retention of her maiden name does not help she changed her name to Hillary Rodham Clinton. That's the price a woman had to pay.

We forget that before Obamacare there was Hillarycare. Clinton fought a bruising battle for Universal Healthcare. The battle almost derailed her husband's nascent presidency. Her mastery of the subject remains unrivaled. In 2008 Obama airily promised universal healthcare without a provision called 'mandate' unlike that of Clinton's. Clinton's plan that included a 'mandate' was derided as a 'tax'. As president Obama's plan included a mandate and the US Supreme Court later called it a tax. While her efforts to overhaul the nation's healthcare burned to the ground Clinton gained a small but very significant victory by working with her Republican detractors to create a Children's Health Insurance Plan (CHIP). Today that plan helps millions of poor children get lifesaving health care. If this is not leadership what else is?

Hillary Clinton's run for the US Senate showed her at her best. Ridiculed a 'carper bagger' Clinton worked her heart out to earn the votes and her opponent's sexism helped. During a debate Clinton's opponent Rick Lazio walked up to her podium and glowered above her and hectored her into signing a declaration.

Asked about her high unfavorables recently Clinton opined that her favorability ratings are usually very high while she's in office as First Lady or Senator or Secretary of State but drop, precipitously, when she's running for office. It was an astute observation that says she shares an interesting relationship with the  electorate. Her brilliance and experience is never in question and, to be fair, she herself is in question when she is seeking office but, to be equally fair, some of those questions are often in the tone of "any woman, but this woman". This is despicable cop out by those, men and women, who hold Clinton to a harsher standard because she is a woman to pretend like they would vote for a better woman. No and No and not at all.

Clinton has sponsored more successful bipartisan legislation than Obama and Kerry. In the Senate Clinton earned the very grudging respect of her GOP colleagues who had declared earlier never to do anything that would even remotely help her look good when she decides to run for the presidency. Though she entered the senate as a former first lady she played by the rules in a chamber that has archaic rules of seniority. A landmark work of her in the senate was getting the healthcare help that firemen of New York City who worked at the World Trade Center needed. She took on the Bush administration and got billions for New York City. A representative of the Firemen Union, a traditional republican supporting group, expressed admiration recently for her work. How this work even rated as "jury is out" category by a group that purportedly exists to help women become leaders? Pray, what kind of leaders do these women want to create? Ah, the politically correct woman leader who'll plant vegetable garden and talk about healthy diet. If a man had drawn such a distinction he'd be called, correctly, a sexist and these women should not be spared that label either.

8 years later things were not much different when she ran for the presidential nomination. At New Hampshire two men stood in a Clinton rally holding up a T-shirt that read "go home and do laundry". Clinton, running for elected office, had to manage an adroit chuckle to brush it aside with a "the last vestiges of sexism are alive". Charged endlessly that she's icy and does not show 'human warmth' Clinton partly won the state when in a candid moment she almost choked answering how she picked herself up every day despite the drumbeat of defeat from all quarters. Nobody thought it was abominable when a debate moderator cheerfully asked why she is not liked by many, because, after all, a woman should be liked by all. Never mind that all politicians, male or female, are not universally loved. Obama and Bush remain hated by half the country and yet it is only Clinton who gets that question. Obama, in an unfortunate moment for him, interjected to answer, without even looking at her, "you're likable enough Hillary". Clinton won New Hampshire, narrowly. The world loves a woman when she acts, well, 'womanly', looking askance for support and craving public approval but hates her when she is strong and is a rampart of strength.

The millenials we're told don't think it's a big deal anymore to elect a woman to office. That is wrong. Dead wrong. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in her memoirs recalled how she was taunted by her male colleagues for her appearance. It took Obama 8 years to acknowledge that Clinton, as a woman candidate, was measured by different standards.

It is ok for male candidates to strut about in the same dark suit, white shirt and red tie combo every day but Clinton's wardrobe was closely scrutinized for including when she wore tops that, horror of horrors, seemed to show just a hint of a cleavage. The storied Washington Post screamed "Hillary Clinton's Tentative Dip into Neckline Territory". From exposing Nixon and Watergate The Post's journalism had dipped, not tentatively, into 'neckline territory'. Defending the article the columnist said that how a candidate delivers the message, "the tone of voice, the appearance, the context", matters. Really? How many articles are devoted to any male candidate's wardrobe choices in that context? The Post's then media critic Howard Kurtz wrote an explanatory column about the scurrilous post article and helpfully titled it "Cleavage & the Clinton Campaign Chest".

A popular cop out admonition about Hillary Clinton is her standing by Bill Clinton despite his peccadilloes. Women, who anyway hate Hillary, often say with righteous indignation "oh I'd have left my husband". Did not Tolstoy teach us that "each unhappy family is unhappy in it's own way"? It never strikes many that Hillary and Bill could possibly love each other too much and love in such a way that it triumphs the pain. These are two very politically active spouses with a deep strain of activism in their veins. They, as a couple, have done much to shape up the Democratic party after the humiliating landslide loss of Hubert Humphrey. Marriages are complicated and the Bill-Hill marriage is complicated too but it is none of the voter's business. Let's not forget that Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Kennedy, not to mention a long list of others including most recently the wife of David Petraeus, all have stood by their philandering husbands.

Google the words "Hillary Clinton screaming" and you'll be surprised by the number of articles on that. Obama, Sanders and, of course, Trump all scream at the top of their lungs but it is Clinton who is considered a shrew because she speaks at the top of her voice. If she speaks softly she's seen as weak, not just weak but 'woman like weak', and if she speaks loud she's screaming. Late night comedian Jimmy Fallon mansplained to her how as a woman candidate she can never catch a break on her decibel.

Ask any working woman today and she'd confide how a male boss would look disapprovingly at her taking a sick day off or god forbid a day off to take care of a sick child. Yes, Clinton has a penchant for secrecy that is fueled by how her privacy has often been violated by witch hunting opponents and a public that simply thinks she's a congenital liar. But, it was not just her penchant for secrecy that made her to be less than forthcoming about her pneumonia afflictions. She later confided that as a woman, especially as one who's stamina is being questioned by her misogynist opponent, she thought she could downplay the news and work through the sickness. No, it is not easy to run as a woman for the highest office of the land even today.

If Donald Trump delegitimizing Barack Obama's birth and thereby the presidency is correctly labeled as racism then why is delegitimizing Clinton winning the nomination not labeled sexism? If it was ok for Obama to win the nomination powered by unprecedented turnout of the black vote why is it any less when Clinton does the same? Who gave Sanders the right to run down Clinton's victories as something she won "in the south"? First they said she won the primaries in the South. Then she won the Mid West. Then she won the North and then she won the very liberal California. Two days before the New York Primary pundits were musing over a possible humiliating loss for Clinton in her home state after Sanders held rallies attended by raucous tens of thousands, twice. Clinton won by a wide margin and then pundits and others brushed it as "oh well it's her home state".

The Sanders candidacy has cast a shadow on how brilliantly Clinton won against heavy odds. Nothing illustrates this better than what happened in the Dakotas. North Dakota had a caucus, a format that heavily favored Sanders's motivated youth vote, and Sanders won by 40 points. South Dakota had a traditional primary, a format that is truly democratic and tends to favor Clinton whose voters are older, and Clinton won by 2 points. But the real story is within. The total votes cast in North Dakota were 400 and Sanders got 250, Clinton 101 and uncommitted 10. The total votes cast in South Dakota were 53,00 and Clinton got 27046 to Sanders's 25,958. Sanders carried the Alaska caucus by 63 points by taking 440 votes to Clinton's 90 votes. In the much anticipated California primary, Clinton got 2.7 million votes and bested Sanders by 9 points to his 2.3 million votes. In New York out of 1.8 million Clinton garnered 1.05 million and beat Sanders by 16 points for his 750,000 votes. When all was done Clinton led Sanders by millions of votes and hundreds in delegate count. Yet, on the night she officially crossed the threshold and made history by becoming the first woman nominee of a major party Sanders not only refused to even acknowledge that but he even went to the extent of disputing her win.

Clinton showed what leadership is in 2008 when after a very hard fought primary Obama barely edged her, unlike how she beat Sanders handily in 2016, she not only bowed to the inevitable she turned herself into the most committed soldier to getting Obama elected. A group of African-American women told NPR that Clinton's conduct earned their respect. How Clinton conducted herself vis-a-vis Obama earned the votes of a critical section of the Democratic party and it is precisely those voters that Sanders brushed aside.

The sexism of Sanders was very latent and couched within his perfectly democratic rights to fight for an electoral victory that he thought he should get but many of his followers did not bother with any fig leaves and flaunted their sexism against Clinton. A Washington Post analysis of sexist tweets showed that of all the sexist tweets against Clinton nearly 14% came from Sanders's supporters. When Sanders's combative campaign manager Jeffrey Weaver said Clinton's "ambition" could tear the Democratic party US News rightly called it out as sexist by saying that running for the presidency, indeed, takes ambition and Sanders himself was no less ambitious by calling for a revolution and therefore to single out Clinton, a woman, for ambition is sexist. Sanders acted so sexist during a debate that left wing economist and columnist Paul Krugman said Sanders was beginning to mirror the "Bernie Bros", a virulently sexist group of Sanders supporters.

Another popular trope to discredit Clinton is to accuse anyone or any organization supporting her as being "in the tank" or, oh the horror, "establishment". This came mostly from the Sanders supporters. Sure, not every criticism of Clinton should be tagged sexist and there is ample in Clinton's conduct and ideas that could be subject to fair criticism. But criticisms often descend into delegitimization of her candidacy and her wins. Editorial boards of newspapers sympathetic to Sanders's policies gave him latitude to explain details regarding his foreign policy and his central theme of taking the financial industry to the woodshed and Sanders, to their surprise, came out woefully uninformed or to be blunt, clueless. Naturally, they all endorsed Clinton and for that sin alone they were tarred with the "establishment" brush. Commenting on a Washington Post article that sought to explain to Clinton why she's not winning by a large margin against a horrible opponent like Trump a reader listed a whole litany of epithets, "lying, imperious, vindictive, harridan". Harridan? My foot. The comment was a top pick comment. Clinton, as per the fact checking site politifact, is no more lying than Sanders and way more truthful than Trump who has no notion of what truth is. Calling for a 'revolution' is not imperious but Clinton is. Let's not fool ourselves that Clinton's candidacy is something that's not historical and that her struggle in the polls is only because it is a Clinton.

Amongst the so called progressive it is an article of faith that Clinton is hawk compared to the peacenik Sanders. Sanders is a hypocrite when it comes to war. He often claims that he voted against the Iraq War resolution because he felt it did not meet his criteria owing to lack of specifics, plans etc.  By that standard he should've voted against the Afghanistan war too but he happily voted for it because he realized that voting against it would cost his senate seat and he did not, in his own words, want to lose an election for the sake of a war vote.

The Iraq vote has been used to literally pillory Clinton for nearly 8 years. What is little known is how Obama very adroitly cast only "present" votes, not even abstentions, as state legislator in Illinois and cast every vote for Iraq related resolutions later just as Clinton. Unlike Obama Clinton was not known to shy from action. Senator Tom Daschle advised freshman senator Obama to prepare a run for the presidency as early as possible and not be inhibited by lack of experience. Daschle reasoned that a freshman senator will have little or no votes to defend. Yes, Obama mounted a successful campaign because, unlike Clinton, he had nothing to defend.

From Madeleine Albright to Samantha Powers and Hillary Clinton it is interesting that strong willed women have persuaded American presidents to initiate a military action in the interest of preventing genocides. If this is hawkish then so be it. Rarely has a presidential candidate been so experienced and shown such deep engagement with issues as Clinton has. If there is one thing that Clinton will never be accused of it is inaction.

There is endless prattle about Clinton and Benghazi but little note of the fact that as Secretary of state Clinton worked with republicans to increase "survivor benefits for military families" from a paltry $12,000 to $100,00. Pray what is Sanders's legislative record, that too with bipartisan support? Nothing. Zilch. To say that he does not have a commendable legislative record because he's a puritan warrior only insults the process of democracy.

Clinton has a great record of working with republicans. As member of the Senate Armed Services committee she earned the respect of senators like John McCain. Today, faced with a Trump takeover of the White House, droves of republicans, diplomats and others, have endorsed Clinton. This is a stunning act that is often taken little notice. Newspapers in deep red states that have never endorsed a democrat in many decades have endorsed Clinton. If this person is not a role model for women who else is?

For those sexist doubters of whether a woman can be a commander-in-chief another woman from another era answered best when her island nation was threatened total annihilation by an armada.

"I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and thin foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field".

The words of Queen Elizabeth spoken to her troops at Tilbury will be vindicated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Let us then elect Hillary Clinton, not only because she's a woman but because, today, she's the best choice. Anyone voting for Trump, directly or indirectly is a traitor to the American dream and such votes have the danger of making November 8th "a date that will live in infamy". Hillary Rodham Clinton is all that stands between a racist, misogynist, bigot and the Oval office. Let's get Hillary Clinton elected so that we can make the words of Longfellow, that FDR quoted in his handwritten letter to Churchill amidst another era of great peril, come true:

Sail on, Oh Ship of State!
Sail on, Oh Union strong and great.
Humanity with all its fears
With all the hope of future years
Is hanging breathless on thy fate

References:

1. North Dakota Caucus http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/north-dakota
2. South Dakota Primary http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/south-dakota
3. Alaska Caucus http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/alaska
4. California Primary http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/california
5. New York Primary http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-york
6. Washington Post Analysis of sexist tweets https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/02/24/these-6-charts-show-how-much-sexism-hillary-clinton-faces-on-twitter/
7. Sanders campaign and charges of sexism http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/opinion-blog/articles/2016-04-15/sanders-self-righteousness-allows-sexist-overtones-in-attacks-on-clinton
8. Queen Elizabeth speech to troops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_to_the_Troops_at_Tilbury
9. Jimmy Kimmel mansplains to Hillary Clinton https://youtu.be/j2wBpYT6Zlo
10. Hillary Clinton and Surviving families benefits http://correctrecord.org/hillary-clinton-a-record-of-service-to-veterans/
11. Obama's "present votes" http://www.factcheck.org/2008/09/obamas-legislative-record/
12. FDR's letter to Churchill https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/churchill/interactive/_html/wc0112.html
13. Hillary Clinton's Commencement speech at Wellesley http://time.com/4359618/hillary-clinton-wellesley-commencement-transcript/
14. Why Hillary Clinton's Beijing speech matters http://time.com/4125236/hillary-clinton-beijing-speech-video/
15. Washington Post article on Hillary Clinton's 'neckline' http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902668.html
16. NYT article about the Post article on Clinton's 'neckline' http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/28/us/politics/28hillary.html
17. Washington Post article by Howard Kurtz "Cleavage & Clinton Campaign Chest" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072702369.html

The Democratic Primary Debate: A Love Fest, A Santa Claus Syndrome and Unasked Questions

If anyone thought the Democratic primary debate was substantive, policy oriented, an adult conversation and political bonhomie, everything that, in their opinion, the GOP debate was not, is either naive or politically ignorant or a blatant partisan or a mix of all that. What they are not is knowledgeable and objective. Here's why.

Anyone who chuckles about the rowdy GOP debate and preens about how fault like the Democrats were did not live in 2008. As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battled for the nomination in 2008 the Democratic party feared being torn asunder. That is no exaggeration. Even as there appeared no pathway toward becoming the nominee Hillary Clinton refused to drop out of the race making the African-American community angry that she'd ensure that Barack Obama arrives at the nomination as 'damaged goods'. At the debate in South Carolina Clinton and Obama lit into each other with Obama wondering which Clinton he was running against and Clinton alleging that Obama worked for a slum lord. Bill Clinton did not help matters for Hillary by recalling how Jesse Jackson failed in his quest for the nomination. The black community was aghast at the blatant put down of Obama's historic candidacy. Much respected black Congressman John Clyburne reportedly said "why doesn't Bill Clinton call Obama a boy and get it over with".

Miffed at what she perceived as kid-glove treatment of Obama by debate moderators Hillary complained in a debate in Philadelphia, "why don't you give him a pillow?"Seeing the nomination slip away the Clinton campaign threw the kitchen sink at Obama. When commentators asked about the harsh tactics Bill Clinton nonchalantly said "politics is contact sport. If you cannot stand the heat get out of the kitchen". Asked if she thought Obama was a Christian Hillary gave a Clintonesque reply "yes, as far as I know".

From Wikipedia

The real low point was before the primaries of Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Obama campaign willfully misrepresented Hillary health care plan of calling for individual mandates as a 'tax'. Incidentally Obama, as president did exactly that and the Supreme Court ruled that it was indeed a tax. Hillary Clinton seethed with volcanic rage and exploded before the press "shame on you Barack Obama. Meet me in Ohio". It was also then that Obama's private comments about people "clinging to guns and religion" and voting against their interests got out Hillary jumped at it with gusto. Obama returned the favor and ridiculed her for "acting like Annie Oakley" and hoped that he'd get to see her soon "in her duck blinds".

Once Obama became the presumptive nominee he and Hillary decided to bury their hatchets and journeyed to a joint campaign event to proclaim unity. The event was scheduled at Unity, New Hampshire. Indeed. So, please save the eye rolling at the rowdiness of the GOP debate.

The Democratic party has a formidable candidate and only one other candidate who is even remotely giving her anxiety while in the crowded GOP field there is actually deep bench of talent once one looks beyond the Trump-Carson-Fiorina circus act. There is no Obama this time who is disrupting the coronation of Hillary Clinton. It actually deprives excitement for the party. The GOP voter is more excited to vote than the Democratic party faithful.

It is a complete fabricated myth to say that the Democratic debate was policy oriented compared to the Jake Tapper moderated GOP debate. First, as the Washington Examiner pointed out, it speaks to CNN's double standards. The CNN conducted GOP debate was promoted like it was fight night from the word go. Jake Tapper, an otherwise decent journalist, reduced a presidential debate to schoolyard brawl by asking each candidate what he or she thought of an uncharitable or critical remark made by another candidate. Compelled to outdo Fox News in the ratings game CNN reduced the GOP debate to a slug fest. The same CNN promoted the democratic debate as high minded policy debate between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The hypocrisy aside Anderson Cooper lobbed softball questions.

Hillary Clinton is probably the most experienced candidate with an unprecedented resume to ever run for the President. Former First Lady, Senator, first woman candidate to win a primary and Secretary of State. A formidable candidate Clinton is also a magnet for controversies. Anderson Cooper did not ask substantive questions to her. What were the unasked questions?

Cooper asked Clinton whether her Presidency will be Obama's third term. Clinton gave her by now much mocked laughter and said that if elected being the first woman President would be difference enough. Cooper had no follow through or push back. Clinton just reduced the Presidency to affirmative action where an extra chromosome is deemed change enough. Barely months after leaving the cabinet Clinton had ridiculed Obama's central foreign policy theme of 'do no stupid stuff' as being an insufficient 'organizing principle' for a great country. We do not yet know what she thinks of as 'organizing principle' on the foreign policy front.

'Two for the price of one' was Hillary Clinton's campaign stump speech in 1992. Many of the key topics of today's campaign have its roots in the Clinton Presidency when Hillary was a co-equal partner and yet she was not called to answer for them. There was mention of re-instating Glass-Steagall act but no one sought to ask Hillary what she thought of the act repealed by her husband and now widely blamed for the 2008 financial crises. The large scale incarceration of blacks is spoken of as an urgent racial issue but nobody asked Hillary what her thoughts were on legislation signed by her husband to 'get tough on crimes'. Democrats love to talk of income inequality and a rigged economy but no one asked Hillary if she still agrees with her husband's legislation to 'end welfare as we know it'.

Bill Clinton was widely derided for his style of compromising and 'triangulation'. Hillary was not asked what 'kind' of a president she would be. Seeking to be the new Democrat Bill Clinton declared 'the era of big government is over'. Yet, Hillary, nudged by Bernie Sanders, a self declared democratic socialist, is calling for big government. She was not asked to draw a contrast with the Clinton era. More importantly, in 2008 Obama tied Hillary Clinton's support of NAFTA around her neck as an albatross and presented her as inimical to the working class voter base. In fact Obama's campaign rhetoric was so shrill that Canada was alarmed if he would, as president, repeal the landmark trade pact. To quell the anxieties Obama campaign despatched Austan Goolsbee in secret to the Canadian embassy to calm them saying that all such posturing was only for the sake of campaign. Any other candidates candidacy would have sunk without a trace when such things come out into the open but Obama, the teflon candidate, sailed on. Now, that Obama is negotiating a historic trade pact with South Asian countries. For the second time Hillary found herself selling a free trade pact. Asked why is she now opposing a trade pact she was promoting Hillary said "it did not meet her gold standard" for such acts. Nobody asked her what is indeed her gold standard. If Obama got the pillow from questioners in 2008 in 2012 it is Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton is nothing if not the best informed policy wonk. A commentator once wrote that if the presidency was decided by a written exam she'd ace it. Hillary burst into the national conscience with the disastrous attempted overhaul of the nations convoluted health care industry during Bill Clinton's first term. It was a failure that defined Hillary in the public mind well into the 2000s. Obama's legacy making legislation, often pejoratively referred to as 'Obamacare', is the 'Affordable Care Act'. One of the key revenue streams for funding ACA is a tax on employer provided health plans deemed too generous. The tax, called 'Cadillac tax', actually ensnares a lot of the health plans negotiated by Unions like the UAW. Hillary is now calling for the repeal of that tax. Nobody asked her how she proposes to fund ACA after depriving it of a key revenue source.

A key moment during the debate was when Hillary was asked about the seemingly never ending email scandal. Hillary in true Clinton fashion took responsibility for her decision to use a private email server without mentioning the many months she spent pretending it was a non-issue and tied herself like a pretzel on the timeline of events and finally capping it all with, again, a Clintonian parsing of legality there were no emails in her server that was deemed classified at the time it came in. In yet another moment of how the mainstream media is misreading popular sentiment contrary to their expectations the email scandal lived on in popular discourse and has impacted Hillary's popularity especially on the question of whether she is trustworthy.

Many of those who applauded the Democratic debate pointed to how Hillary's arch rival Bernie Sanders rallied to her support saying that people don't want to listen anymore to "your damn email scandal". Hillary, beaming with gratitude, thanked Bernie as the hall, crowded with devoted partisans, erupted into a standing ovation. Sanders had his own selfish reason in wanting to put an end to any discussion of the email scandal. Sanders's candidacy is built around talking economic equality and his policy prescriptions of 'democratic socialism' and every minute spent talking something else takes the oxygen out of his campaign against a vastly better funded, better organized juggernaut of a campaign that is Hillary's campaign.

Bernie Sanders calls himself a 'democratic socialist' while in reality he should just call himself a 'socialist' but I guess that term is too radioactive to use. Amongst the democratic party it has become an article of faith, a religious orthodoxy, to make it appear that there is no problem on earth that can be solved without taxing the "millionaires and billionaires" and there is no ill on earth that does not involve "the rich". This is no longer the party of Bill Clinton, the new Democrat and it is not even the party of Obama but it is trying to hark back to the days of the muscular liberalism of FDR.

Bernie Sanders is the rock star excitement in 2015 for Democratic party. The leftward lurch of Hillary Clinton is to steal some of that thunder and protect her flank and not make the mistake she did in 2008 of not watching out the left wing of the party. Cooper asked Sanders to define 'democratic socialism' and elicited a non-definition. When pressed whether he thinks his high taxation agenda would work Sanders offered Denmark as an example. Hillary Clinton laced into him saying "we are not Denmark" and that she, unlike Sanders, is a "progressive but a progressive who likes to get results". Sanders was left blinking and wondering what hit him.

Sanders too was not asked to justify his so called 'Denmark model'. Democrats are the worst cheats when they talk of increasing taxes for the 'millionaires and billionaires' because in reality many of their tax proposals starts at $250,000, which in reality, is mostly middle class in the expensive to live North East and California. Democrats are unleashing a class war in America by making 98% people think that they can have the cake and eat it too by making the 2% pay for it. In reality if every utopian idea of the democrats is implemented it'd take taxes on a much larger population. In recent interviews Sanders concedes, oh so slyly and oh so shyly, that indeed the taxes will affect everyone and not just the much vilified rich.

From Wikipedia

Anderson Cooper, a limousine liberal himself, did not have the intellectual gravitas to point out to Sanders that it is the much reviled 'rich' who pay the majority of the taxes too. It is a complete canard to say the rich get tax breaks. All statistical data point to the incontrovertible truth that the rich, especially the demonized top 1%, pay the lions share of America's tax receipts. Actually in Denmark, like any European country, the middle class pays a much higher tax than America. The duplicity of democrats, starting with Obama, is in offering European style socialism with American taxation where, unlike Europe, the few pay for every program. If socialism is to be stuffed down my throat I'd much rather prefer the European model than the American one.

Donald Trump has made the GOP the laughing stock of the world and the democrats are salivating at the prospect of Trump being the GOP nominee. What is less noticed or spoken of is how Bernie Sanders's immigration policies are strikingly similar to Trump albeit without the racism of the latter. Sanders stoutly opposes immigration. Of course like his beloved Denmark he wants America to close it's borders. Interestingly there was no question on that.

Asked if they would pardon Edward Snowden if he returns to America all the candidates safely agreed that they'd not pardon him. The real unasked question was about the grotesque surveillance state that Obama's administration presides over. Obama, in his first inaugural address, loftily declared that he rejects the false choice between security and liberty. Yet, Obama's warrantless wiretaps have prompted even somebody like former New York Times editor to remark that this is the most dangerous presidency in American history. No one, not even Obama's secretary of State, was asked "what do you intend to do?"

A columnist listing the winners of the night included Barack Obama because the incumbent was not criticized at all and in fact all candidates struggled to differentiate themselves from the incumbent. This underscores how little Obama's record, despite his approval rating hovering less than 50%, was not really dissected especially by those who want to succeed him from his own party. Essentially they were all auditioning for Obama's third term.

The questions on Iraq war and Syria were dispatched off by the candidates, especially Hillary Clinton, with staple talking points that went unchallenged. Another question that went unasked was Obama's policy of drone wars that has come to be written about with great concern even on the front pages of New York Times, especially on the very contentious way that the administration counts the dead, its classification of who is a terrorist is controversial to say the least. We are asked to believe such a vacuous debate was substantive. If this is how policy debates are to be conducted I'd easily trade it for the motley raucous GOP debate.

The democratic party has been afflicted by what I'd like to call the 'Santa Claus syndrome'. Santa Claus, at least sets some criteria to get a gift, one has to have behaved good, the democrats want to run the economy like its a candy store and outdo Santa. It is pathetic that there was no serious questioning on the biggest problem that America faces. Debt and deficit. Make no mistake America's debt problem is a ticking time bomb and no amount of taxing the 1% will fix it. Also, make no mistake that the large part of debt is entirely due to what is collectively called 'entitlement spending'.

On the issue of taxes a Tamil blogger provided a Freudian slip that best illustrates why taxing the rich is popular and why somebody like Sanders draws support. The blogger, a Sanders supporter, cooly said "well its not people like us who'll be affected by his taxes". Essentially he was confessing that while he may get to enjoy the benefits (actually that is itself debatable) it'll be somebody else paying for it. Coming from a country ruined by freebies he has learned little of the cost of such sloganeering.

One of Sanders's pipe dreams is to provide free college. Of course, yet again, it is to be paid for by taxing the rich. Oy vey, if only I had a penny every time that idea was offered I can retire securely. The reckless government funding of college tuition has played a big role in fueling the exponential increase of college tuition in America. If health care spending is to be controlled democrats love to bash the service providers, viz the insurance companies and hospitals whereas when it comes to tuition increase there is little or no talk of holding universities responsible but instead talk only revolves around how to raid the treasury to keep funding the ravenous appetite of universities. The Obama administration's feeble efforts in including affordability as a criterion in scoring universities was quietly buried thanks to the immense power of lobbying that universities, breeding grounds for future merchants of utopia, exercised. It is easy for democrats to rail and rant against the much regulated industries of oil and high finance than to even offer a weak protest against the true driver of inequality, unaffordable college education.

Democrats love to brag that Obama's 'Affordable care act' brought the number of uninsured down by a large margin. True. Very true. But what is also true is that nearly 80% new enrollees in ACA draw a subsidy from the government and most are part of the expansion of medicaid. This is absolute catastrophe waiting to explode. In this context is worthwhile recalling that a video showing one of the architects of the act bragging that the American public was duped into supporting the healthcare overhaul on the premise that it would cut costs whereas the goal was only to expand care and taming the cost was not even on the agenda. And here we have a debate that featured Hillary Clinton without a question about any of that. Civility? Shucks. Policy oriented debate? My foot.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, struggling in the polls and therefore seeking to gain a foothold in the debate shrieked with self-righteous indignation that he'd expand healthcare to even illegal immigrants. Of course who cares about how to pay for it. O'Malley left a solid blue Maryland so broken that they elected a Republican to succeed him as governor. It is not without reason that every liberal state is fiscally deep in the red with structural deficits. Of course O'Malley was on the debate stage merely as decoration that Anderson Cooper did not even pretend to ask him anything substantive.

The night's only moment of candor, albeit, again, with the right dose of righteous indignation, was when Bernie Sanders bristled about his voting records on gun rights. Mr Sanders, who voted against the 'Brady bill', angrily thundered that he comes from a state, Vermont, which cherishes gun rights. So by that token he should give a pass to Hillary Clinton  who as Senator from New York had to accommodate Wall Street banks because after-all what can the state of New York do without those fat cats?

In a debate that featured 3 senators and two governors, one of whom had been a senator too, there was no question of how they'd work with GOP or reach out across the aisle. For the foreseeable future the GOP will control the house and the Senate will not have a filibuster proof democratic majority unless a full blown drubbing of the GOP happens thanks to until now unthinkable situation of Trump being the nominee. A democratic president will have to reach across the aisle. Obama who had no experience of crafting any legislation let alone a bipartisan legislation had no idea of how to be a Bill Clinton. Unlike George Bush who worked with his arch rival Ted Kennedy to create a bipartisan legislation to reform education Obama had to pass his health care reform without a single vote from the GOP. The cause was not just the GOP's intransigence but also that of a hubris driven imperious president who loved to taunt his rivals "elections have consequences and I won". For all those who rail against GOP's intransigence belabor under the ignorance of how the likes of Harry Reid and Elizabeth Warren operate. Warren, the liberal lioness, once said that she'd much rather leave "blood and teeth on the floor" instead of compromising on the nature of an agency she was proposing. Once GOP took control of the Senate Obama was able to move more bills than he ever could when Harry Reid controlled the senate. Privately Obama administration confided to New York Times that without Reid the president has found GOP more willing to work with him and more willing to be professional.

As for the much lauded civility of Obama asking his one time bitter rival Hillary Clinton to serve in his cabinet people forget that he asked Bush appointee Robert Gates to continue as Secretary of defense. Sure it was nice of Obama but we need to credit Gates too for agreeing to serve under a guy who vilified his former boss as a ticket to the Oval office. Also less noticed is how non-partisan Bush was and is. During the days of the financial crises, a gift of the Clinton economy actually, Bush instructed all his officials to keep the campaigns of both Obama and McCain equally informed because one of them will have to succeed him. Also, unlike what the departing Clinton administration did Bush ensured that the incoming Obama team was already up to speed on national security and key issues.

In case the readers have forgotten I take pleasure in reminding them how childish the Clinton administration behaved when George Bush took over. Peeved over the contentious and controversial manner of how Bush reached the presidency many Clinton officials vandalized the computers in the White House by removing the letter 'W' from the keyboards.

Let's see what kind of beast will slouch towards the Oval office in 2016.

References:

1. CNN debate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr1KJR5UZjM
2. "86% of Health Care Enrollees Receive Subsidies, White House Says" http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/us/11-7-million-americans-have-insurance-under-health-act.html?_r=0
3. Healthcare architect Jonathan Gruber saying "lack of transparency" helped pass Affordable Care Act https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G790p0LcgbI
4. Jonathan Gruber calls the American voter "stupid" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUOyqw5HhRI
5. The Denmark fallacy. Here's how US taxation compares to other countries. Check the graphic. At $55,000 Denmark levies a 60% tax. http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/01/pf/taxes/top-income-tax/
6. Medicare and Social Security is driving US debt http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2013/nov/22/marco-rubio/medicare-and-social-security-not-defense-are-drivi/
7. Clinton White House vandalized computers when George Bush transitioned in http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/12/us/white-house-vandalized-in-transition-gao-finds.html
8. Tensions flare between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in South Carolina debate in 2008 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD9F1t9GQzA
9. Hillary Clinton says 'Shame on  you Barack Obama' in Ohio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_X-RoRghAY
10. Hillary Clinton complaining about the preferential treatment given to Barack Obama during debates http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/02/26/clinton-i-always-get-the-first-question/comment-page-12/
11. "The rich pay majority of US income taxes" http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/12/news/economy/rich-taxes/
12. Elizabeth Warren on leaving "blood and teeth on the floor" http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/13/1025859/-Vanity-Fair-The-Woman-Who-Knew-Too-Much-Elizabeth-Warren-I-ve-done-brutal#
13. Bernie Sanders for taxing "ALL" to fund family leave plan http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/18/politics/bernie-sanders-payroll-tax-hike-family-leave/
14. Bernie Sanders tells Bill Maher that more than just 1% will be taxed more (but not too many) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10/17/heres-how-bernie-sanders-told-comedian-bill-maher-he-would-pay-for-his-plans/

Donald Trump's Candidacy and America's Intellectual Decline

How did Donald Trump, a bloviating billionaire, become a viable candidate for the US presidency in a country that boasts of the American Philosophical Society and The Metaphysical Club? The candidacy of Donald Trump was born on the day Bill Clinton decided to court the youth vote by appearing on MTV and answering whether he preferred boxers or briefs. Democrats are chortling that Trump resembles the GOP and preening intellectuals are tittering that Trump will lead GOP to an electoral rout not seen since the days of FDR. Trump is not the product of GOP and nor is he a problem for the GOP. Trump is a creation of America's intellectual decline and resembles America, not just one or the other party. All that remains is for a 21st century Richard Hofstadter to reprise a retelling of 'Anti-Intellectualism in America'.

Benjamin Franklin established the American Philosophical Society in 1743 and the Metaphysical Club was first established by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1872. Both were supposed to foster vigorous intellectual debate and provide the nascent country with intellectual inputs. Thomas Jefferson was instrumental in establishing the Library of Congress and felt that legislators should've access to a library to read and enlighten themselves before legislating. Donald Trump is incapable of any intellectual thought or vision and yet he is a serious candidate for a national party. How did this happen?

Donald Trump

The coarsening of debate and an all pervading shallowness in conversation are both the contributions of a social media fueled 24 hour news cycle. There was a time when Milton Friedman, no less, ran a series of shows dedicated to very serious discussion on economics with guests like Thomas Sowell. Friedman's show 'Free to choose' was legendary in dethroning liberal economics with feisty, lively and deeply intellectual debate on how 'progressive policies' where anything but progressive. And then there was William F. Buckley Jr's 'Firing Line' with wit, verve and intellectualism. Buckley's on-air vitriolic feud with Gore Vidal had all the fireworks that one would expect when ideological apostles of clashing world views joust intellectually. It is a sad decline that in today's America what makes for controversy is a woman moderator being berated vulgarly by an air-headed billionaire.

Newt Gingrich acidly told financial journalist Mario Bartiromo, during a debate where she moderated, in 2011 that nobody in the news media asked "one single intelligent question to the 'Occupy Wall Street' crowd". The 'Occupy' movement was a rag tag motley crowd with a collective IQ on economics that was almost zero. Yet, the media lionized them without any serious intellectual scrutiny of their addled ideas or idiotic policy prescriptions. Is the connection between media leaving 'Occupy' crowd unchallenged and the rise of Trump as a candidate, a tenuous or far fetched one? No. Not at all. When one kind of vacuous demagoguery is accepted in the name of challenging 'the establishment' it is impossible to prevent another demagogue doing the same.

When highly respected and very professional anchor John King, CNN, opens a presidential debate with a question on the private life of a candidate and get's singed on live-TV by the sharp tongued candidate we can understand why the media is the favorite punching bag for the extremes in both left and right. Newt Gingrich went on to win the South Carolina primary solely because of that on-air explosion. This is the same media that gave Barack Obama an unprecedented latitude because of his historic candidacy. At one debate Hillary Clinton mocked the media for its softball questions to Barack Obama. She asked "why don't you give him a pillow".

A sickening feature of the rise of the Trump candidacy is the role of the media. On the one hand anchors breathlessly comment on how the man adds nothing to the debate, how he is a problem for a party that's trying to reach out to minorities and then goes to the same man for interviews because, as he rightly brags, he's a 'ratings machine'. Trump has been invited by CNN's Wolf Blitzer to comment on serious issues so many times in the past as if he had anything to contribute. The media created Trump and is now acting like the GOP created him. Only Huffington Post had the guts to say it'll stop covering Trump as a candidate for the presidency but will feature him in the entertainment section.

The rise of Huffington Post as a news portal is the best summary of America's intellectual decline. The Huffington Post is nothing but a web aggregator and does no original journalism, lives off the journalistic efforts of other news organizations, and makes more money than them. How does one intelligently talk of the roots of the 2008 financial crisis in a country where Huffington Post exists?

The media circus during the 2008 heated primaries featuring Obama and Clinton showed the shallowness of the debate. Supporters and partisans from each camp were invited on primary nights and other times to pow-wow on-air by networks. Pray, since when did mud fights by partisan hacks become worthy of being labeled political debate? Yet, no anchor challenged Barack Obama on serious issues like campaign finance. As a long shot candidate Obama had signed a pledge that if elected as nominee he'd take public financing for the general election. Then, nominee Obama, rolling in cash, refused to do just that despite being reminded of the pledge by a far underfunded opponent. Nobody in the media sought to pin him on the hypocrisy. And Obama gleefully dished out policies that everyone loved to hear but nobody thought he'd seriously implement. Obama talked tough on appointing lobbyists until he appointed one. He pontificated loftily on how he'd bring about health care reform with discussions on live TV until he discovered the virtues of backroom deals. He railed and ranted against NAFTA and then slyly sent his economic adviser to the Canadian embassy to assuage fears that he might tear up NAFTA. Now, the same guy is trying to sign the largest trade deal.  Is it any wonder then that the people have little or no faith in the media? Faced with double speaking politicians it is no wonder that a guy who speaks his mind, however offensively, catches the imagination of the people and is rewarded for being gutsy.

If Mitt Romney had had half the guts of Donald Trump he'd be sitting in the Oval office today. Romney was repeatedly cornered in debates by his opponents and moderators for how his firm 'Bain Capital' conducted business. He was repeatedly asked to explain job losses at firms his company bought over and he was tarnished as 'vulture capitalist'. What many conceded in private and what was true was that the nature of his business was exactly that. Private Equity firms are called in as a last resort by a hemorrhaging firm to restructure and become viable. This naturally involves layoffs. Asked about lenders losing money when his companies declared bankruptcy Trump cheerfully told the moderator "look, these lenders are not small time investors". He essentially said "they know what game they are playing". That was ballsy. The audience  loved it. Romney, a far more honorable business man than Trump, never embraced a muscular argument in favor of capitalism and thus yielded the ground to Obama, a demagogue, who understood nothing of economics. On this one score I wish Romney had been like Trump.

It is sickening to a see a parade of self-righteousness by the Democratic party against Trump's misogyny. Apparently its not ok to be offensive about women and minorities only when its the GOP doing it. Washington DC mayor, African-American, railed against how Asian shops are dirty and there was no furore of disapproval. A South Carolina union had a pinata beating contest where the piñata was the GOP governor Nikki Haley's face. Nikki Haley, a woman of Indian origin, is the governor of SC. Liberal comedian Bill Maher happily heaped patently offensive comments about vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin without attracting even a finger wagging let alone a tsunami of condemnation. Then there was Barack Obama telling Hillary Clinton, without looking at her, "you are likable enough Hillary" and then called a lady reporter "sweetie". And then there is Bill Clinton, he of the "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky" fame.

When the Democratic party candidates pontificate on Trump's demagoguery its rich with hypocrisy. The basic rule of politics is anything goes. Throwing the kitchen sink at the opponent is par for the course. When GOP congressman Paul Ryan presented proposals to overhaul entitlement programs the Democrats released an ad showing him pushing an old woman off a mountain cliff.

Yes, Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants being rapists, is not just false but patently offends any decent person. But, again, Trump's demagoguery strikes a chord in a sympathetic audience, but, at its root is the Democratic demagoguery that nobody becomes rich except by defrauding somebody else. Democrats made it fashionable to tell a majority of America that a minority is responsible for all their troubles and lack of progress in life. To the democrats the culprits were the so called rich people. To the Trump voter it is the illegal immigrant. Across the world, in every country, immigration always raises concern about destabilizing local labor market. This is economic reality. There are sound economic arguments in favor of immigration but sound economic arguments are not only shunned by the Democrats but actively discredited so when they are indignant at Trump feeding into a frenzy they are being facetious and hypocritical. Also the cynicism of the GOP voter on immigration is not entirely without basis. Democrats always gleefully point out that it was Reagan who actually allowed an Amnesty program for illegal immigrants. True. Reagan signed on to an amnesty program when the number of illegal immigrants were 3 million. The other part of the bargain was to secure the border and that never happened and the result is today there are 14 million illegal immigrants. Also, let's face it, the Democratic party loves this problem only because they see a vote bank in that demographics.

For those offended by the vulgar remarks of Donald Trump here's another unpleasant fact of why such rhetoric could appeal to a voter. The illegal immigrant lobby has become a political force that is brazen in its demands and the brazenness is not just in 'demanding' citizenship but has reached such ludicrous levels where it is considered politically incorrect to even call them "illegal immigrant". The political correctness brigade informs us that we should refer to them as "undocumented immigrant". Is it any wonder that when Trump rails against political correctness there are people willing to applaud him. And by the way Bernie Sanders, a proud socialist and another Democratic candidate, practically echoes Trump's desire to seal the borders and put a stop to immigration. So much for the GOP being the party opposed to immigration. Actually GOP loves immigration, albeit, the legal kind, the kind that is not a hostage to the Democratic party.

There was a time when Leonard Bernstein conducted classes on classical music for children in New York City and that was broadcast. Then there was Jacob Bronowski lecturing the world on the intellectual "Ascent of man". Today we are left with following Kim Kardashian's nude posterior breaking the internet. And then we blame Trump for having audacity to consider himself a candidate for the highest office in the land.

Donald Trump is a product of the intellectual swamp that is America today. Trump is a reflection of the decline of intellectualism in all walks of life in America. Trump is not GOP's problem he is America's problem. Trump does not embody GOP, he embodies America and for that every American should be ashamed.

How Obama Became Bush (and Worse)

Barack Obama came to his history making inauguration in 2008 like a Caesar. His entourage rolled into Washington DC like a Roman triumph. Millions flocked to see the nation's first black President take oath and turn their back on George W Bush who departed for Texas with an approval rating that was the worst for any departing president since Nixon. Bill Clinton won in landslides and became the first democrat to win two terms after FDR and yet he never won 50% of the popular vote. If seen in terms of popular vote it is a fact that a majority of the country voted against Bill Clinton. Clinton's approval ratings, even today, is something that Obama can only yearn for. Bush scraped by the 50% in 2004 after the humiliating controversial win of 2000. In 16 years no candidate had so comfortably won the plurality of the popular vote as Obama did in 2008 and then repeated in 2012. Today, Obama's approval rating matches that of what Bush had at his 5th year. If predictions come true Obama would've led Democrats to a defeat in the coming midterms the same as Bush did in 2006.

Gone are the soaring dreams. Gone are the lusty cheers of 'yes we can'. To cap it all, this week fellow liberal and Democratic Senator, from California, Dianne Fienstein has accused CIA of spying on computers used by Congressional staff. The man who rode to office promising America that he is the opposite of Bush now looks not just like Bush but, alas, like Nixon.

Edward Snowden, I now agree, is a hero. He laid bare an Orwellian state at great personal cost. Whatever his motivations maybe what he did was a signal service. The tentacles of Obama's state apparatus has shocked a nation beyond compare. New York Times called it 'data hoover' (referring to a popular vacuum cleaning brand name).

The unravelling of the Obamacare rollout was an embarrassment for a candidate who sought to prove that 'smart' government will disprove the critics of 'big' government. Big government is not to be feared, the candidate reasoned, if it was smart. After spending $300 million the government rolled out a website that was unmitigated showpiece of shame. Time magazine cover story ripped into what a botched rudderless rollout it was. Obama sailed to his unexpected re-election on a much a written and admired data operation. When it was his money he engaged the best. When it was the tax payer money he was disconnected and did not care what was happening.

President Bush, much to his own detriment, refused to fire Donald Rumsfeld even as Iraq slid into chaos and Abhu Ghraib became notorious. He was pilloried for sticking by loyalty. Presidents don't like to fire senior staff because it shows they erred in picking them up in the first place and accepting that something went wrong seriously. Obama has steadfastly refused to fire his Secretary of Health Kathleen Sibelius for the Obamacare rollout debacle.

Bush came to office pledging 'nation building at home not abroad'. Candidate Bush said America will no longer be the world's 911 and that America must be a humbler power. Then 9/11 happened and the rest, as they say, is history. Obama came to office vowing to end wars. He succeeded in ending the Iraq war but drags on in Afghanistan. He stunned his voters by retaining Bush's Secretary of defense Robert Gates and then proceeded to infuriate his voters by adopting Bush's Iraq surge model in Afghanistan.

When Romney said that Russia is America's enemy number one the media, the Obama campaign and finally Obama himself mocked him for that. Obama delivered a punch line at a Presidential debate on foreign policy telling Romney that "the 80's called and they want their foreign policy back". America laughed and Romney was defeated. Today Romney has the last laugh while Putin shows Obama who is America's enemy. Now a majority of Americans also agree with Romney.

Obama, who thinks his gifts of oratory are unmatched powers for persuading anybody to 'follow' his lead told the Russian Prime Minister Medvedev that after the 2012 election he'll have more 'room' to negotiate. The remark, which Obama thought was said privately, was broadcast to the world courtesy an open mic. War weary America shrugged it off saying "well thats ok. He is right in a way" and re-elected Obama.

'America is declining' is a theory floated by anyone who wants to write a bestseller. Its a cottage industry. Obama believes that he is midwifing America's transition from a super power to a 'first among equals' nation. American exceptionalism is now a dirty idea. Unable to tame spending Obama is goading the Pentagon to downsize the American military to levels before World War II. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor America was less prepared for war than Netherlands. The new idea that's gaining currency is that no longer America needs to have an army of this size to fight two ground wars. The new wars are won with drones and cyber hacking we are told.

When Bush left office many predicted that Obama will America lovable again. After all candidate Obama was cheered by thousands of Germans even without any significant foreign policy ideology. Apparently Germans forgot that once upon a time they cheered Reagan's bluntness in telling "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall". Today America is hated no less than it was under Bush. In parts of Pakistan, Eastern Europe and other places there is nothing but hatred and disdain for Obama's listless leadership theory of 'leading from behind'. 'Leading from behind'? What's that? France wanted to invade Libya with America leading from behind. They ran out of ammunition, literally, in one week. So much for a world that can carry on without America.

Liberals who chafed at Bush's legislation for secrecy and torture are now squirming in shame seeing Obama draw up lists of who should be killed in the Oval office. When Obama administration frames guidelines in such a way as to undercount civilians killed in drone attacks the preening pompous liberals squirm in silence.

Trying to discredit Hillary and Bill Clinton Obama often decried 'the politics of divisiveness'. Bill Clinton retorted that he fought the fights that needed to be fought. Obama's voters swooned at the promise of a new era of civility and comity in that most fractious blood littered battlefield in all of earth, Washington D.C. Today Obama announces in his state of the union speech that going forward he will working without Congress with a 'pen and a phone'. What a fall from the lofty arrogance of a silver tongued orator who thought he could remake the world with words.

Ah, words. Who would've thought that Obama will be the least persuasive salesman on every key policy initiative that he sought to roll out. His admirers blather that he talks 'professorially' that many fail to understand and therefore fail to support his policies. I guess in their idea a professor is one who is inarticulate and confuses his pupils. Obama went to Bill Clinton, that famed triangulator, to help sell his dreams.

During the heated primaries of 2008 the most heated debate was at South Carolina. Seeing her dreams of a coronation slip away Hillary turned pugnacious before the South Carolina primaries. Obama, in a back handed compliment, told a radio interviewer that Ronald Reagan was a transformative president. Hillary pilloried him for calling Reagan as transformational. Then Obama qualified that what he meant was not a compliment.

I watched Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg gate in which he flung the gauntlet to Gorbachev and clearly spelled out the contrast between the free world and communist totalitarianism. He did not mince words. He underlined the vast destruction that communism inflicted on half the world and the sickening poverty it brought upon continents. Its a clarity of version and boldness in articulation that Obama can only dream of.

America is not a country in decline. America is ready for turning the 21st century too like the previous as an American century. What America needs is a President, a leader, who sees that America is that fabled city on a shining hill.

Today Washington Post reports that NSA has the ability to record 100% all the telephone calls made in a certain country (identity unknown) and also replay calls made 30 days prior. What a denouement for a man who declared in his first inaugural speech, an unremarkable speech, that America need not choose between values and security and that such choices are false choices indeed.

Obama has earned his place in history as America's first black President. Nothing more. 

Thatcher Is Dead. Long Live Thatcherism.

Bernard Shaw's play "Caesar and Cleopatra" has a preface titled "Better than Shakespeare". It was Shaw's contention that Shakespeare, a genius in portraying tragedy, failed to understand the heroism of a character like Julius Caesar and therefore his eponymous play on Caesar was flawed. Upon Margaret Thatcher's death many editorials and the redoubtable Paul Krugman have weighed in on her legacy. Almost all liberal magazines and op-ed writers, except the lunatic far left fringe, couched their appreciation of Thatcher in carefully worded statements that were a shame to linguistic clarity. Reagan and Thatcher will remain beloved in the minds of many of their citizens and in the minds of many across the globe. Yet they will remain the least understand by the academia and the ivory tower of preening intellectuals who wallow in the wooly term 'progressives'. They, like Shakespeare, cannot understand or explain the strength of a Reagan or a Thatcher or a J.P. Morgan or a Leland Stanford.

In an interesting parallel Thatcher and Reagan ascended to power in the gap of a year. Both were instrumental in reversing four decades of run away 'progressive' liberalism that yielded economic misery and devastated both countries. Richard Nixon, Republican, gleefully implemented wage controls, sought and recieved the support of the large unions, campaigned for universal healthcare (when Unions did not want it). Nixon is to the left of Obama. Both US and UK were wracked by runaway inflation or the more dangerous stagflation. The arrival of Thatcher and Reagan did not happen in a vacuum. 

A deep bench of conservative intellectuals, especially in the US, mounted the offensive on liberalism. Ayn Rand battled FDR along with H.L. Mencken and others, then followed Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and finally Milton Friedman. Buckley and Friedman provided the intellectual ballast for conservative revival. Friedman's lectures on public TV, assailing statist Keynesian economics while raising the edifice of free market, provided the intellectual platform for Ronald Reagan. Thatcher schooled herself in Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek. Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom' was a modern classic in economics and a rage in the 50's. Hayek detailed how nations yield to statist fantasies and find themselves in a thralldom.

The day after the first post-war election Churchill, in his own words, 'woke up with a feeling of a sharp stab'. Churchill, who had rescued England and the world from the twin monstrosities of Nazism and fascism was roundly defeated by an England that was tired of being an empire. Churchill, justifiably, was seen as incapable of peacetime rebuilding. Clement Attlee, a liberal, took the helms, liberated India and set England on a course of liberalism for the next 40 years. Along the way the Anglo-French-Israeli misadventure in the Suez canal put paid to any pretension of colonial glory for England. England became a second fiddle to its bigger sibling across the Atlantic.

Until Thatcher became PM there was little difference in economic philosophy between Tory and Labor. The unions had a stranglehold on the economy and practically held the country to ransom as Edward Heath learned at the hands of the miners. 

What was life in UK before Thatcher? A liberal writer writing in the staunchly liberal 'The Guardian' gives a glimpse: "But if today's Guardian readers time-travelled to the late 70s they might be irritated to discover that tomorrow's TV listings were a state secret not shared with daily newspapers. A special licence was granted exclusively to the Radio Times. (No wonder it sold 7m copies a week). It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. You would need to wait six weeks for an engineer. There was only one state-approved answering machine available. Your local electricity "board" could be a very unfriendly place. Thatcher swept away those state monopolies in the new coinage of "privatisation" and transformed daily life in a way we now take for granted."

In another curious parallel both Reagan and Thatcher faced down crippling strikes and broke down the unions. Thatcher had her miners strike in her second term and Reagan had the PATCO strike in his first term. Both strikes were led by greedy unions willing to prove they were militant unions. Reagan fired the entire PATCO union. The miners lost broad public sympathy with their arsonous streak. Organized labor never recovered from those death blows. Both countries, thanks to that, have since prospered.

Between Thatcher and Reagan it was Thatcher who found the words to taunt socialists: "you want to make the poor poorer as long as the rich are less rich". Asked if she would do a u-turn on her policies a stout Thatcher retorted "u turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning". "There is no such thing as public money" said she. Yes, its not a revelation or a discovery. But such truths had been forgotten for decades under the assault of liberal Keynesian policies. Truths needed to be re-told and thats what Thatcher did and for that the world owes her gratitude.

It is not for nothing that 'The Economist' called her a 'Freedom Fighter'. Hugo Chavez was mourned by millions across the globe with little regard to how he mismanaged his country and plundered his country's economy, particularly its oil wealth and fashioned himself a ruler for life. Thatcher, as 'Economist' mourned, was the true 'freedom fighter'. She made England anew and left it a better place than when she ascended. Her biography, from a grocer's daughter to the most powerful and longest reigning PM in modern history in UK, is a story of inspiration and awe.

Paul Krugman in his oped 'Did Thatcher turn around Britain' had two graphs. One, showed that UK's GDP relative to France was in decline, year over year, from 1945-79 and then with Thatcher becoming PM, as if on cue, the graph starts rising. It continues till today. Another graph showed the wild gyration of the employment market which starts to decline, decisively, only from 1993 until the financial crisis of 2008. In fact Thatcher's economy saw an upswing of unemployment. Krugman archly asked 'if it took 20 years for her policies to reap benefit, were they creditable'. I wish he said the same of Obama. Thatcher was reversing the economic decline of nearly 40 years and re-shaping entire segments of the economy. It is bound to disruptive.

Thatcher's reluctance to be drawn into the Euro fantasy cost her the PM chair. Yet as the Euro zone  faces its worst existential crises Thatcher stands vindicated. The Brits owe her a measure of thanks.

Not even Reagan saw the turning of history with Gorbachev as Thatcher did. While Thatcher was not an imperialist in the mould of Churchill her conduct of the Falkland war and joining hands with Reagan to battle Soviet menace brought back England's lost glory. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait Thatcher famously told George H.W. Bush "George, now is not the time to go wobbly".

No obituary of Thatcher was complete without the word 'divisive'. Reagan, on the other hand, was not seen 'divisive' on a similar scale. During the heated 2008 primaries Obama would chide the Clinton era for being 'divisive'. Clinton retorted 'yes. Thats because we fought the fights that had to be fought'. UK was in a deeper mire of liberal nonsense and the entire country was being threatened by unions. Thatcher yanked back the country to life. It is difficult to say if she could have done so with lesser divisiveness. Countering decades of entrenched thinking her laser like opposition to those ideas with very firm articulation of free market could not come across as soothing.

Thatcher and Reagan were the products of an era without whom who knows what course history might have taken in two important countries. Before them nobody thought liberalism could be challenged. After them it was difficult to doubt the blessing of free markets. Both Clinton and Blair were intellectual heirs to Reagan and Thatcher. Clinton, the new-democrat, declared 'the era of big government is over'. Blair re-invented the Labor party and veered away from kowtowing to militant trade unionism. Conservatism was here to stay. When ideological opponents speak your language you have won.

"She and comparisons are odious". Thatcher is dead. Long Live Thatcherism.

Is Barack Obama An Intellectual?

Barack Obama was the first black President of Harvard Law Review, the 5th black senator, the first black president of US in 275 years. He also has the dubious honor of becoming US president with the least governing experience in modern history and had mostly voted 'present' (not even 'abstaining') as state senator in Illinois legislature.

Is it even fair to ask, an Ivy league graduate and a man so many historical firsts, whether Obama is an intellectual? A legendary political strategist confided in a private conversation that "whoever becomes the US President, irrespective of the party, deserves to be there". Obama's candidacy for US presidency is a tale of ambition and strategy unparalleled even by Reagan and Clinton, both of whom were very experienced Governors who sought national office and had to fight their way to it within the party and nationwide.

Taking advantage of opportunities is a talent by itself. In the aftermath of the drubbing that GOP recieved in 2006 mid-term elections Bill Clinton is supposed to have told Hillary "unless the Democratic party nominates a felon we can win the presidency". Obama, in many ways, was like what Carlyle said, "the moment produces the man". Let us not forget that Obama started as an outlier candidate. Until his Iowa victory even within Afro-American community he was seen as sure to lose possibly gain experience now and run a better campaign at a later date. It is easy to talk of how he coasted to the Presidency from gaining popularity since his much lauded address at the 2004 Democratic convention.

It would be gross injustice to Obama's campaign to harp only on how the press treated him with kid gloves and was lost in blind adulation. Bill Clinton was the first Democrat to be re-elected since FDR. Democrats and Republicans thought Hillary was a shoo-in given that she would be supported by the political genius of Bill Clinton. Those were lonely dog days for Obama. When he romped home in Iowa (37% vote) and Hillary finished a poor third Obama became an overnight national sensation. But how he won Iowa is the question on which I intend to discuss what kind of an intellectual Obama is.

Beyond 'hope' and 'change' the only tangible thing Obama did in Iowa was pandering. He pandered to Iowa's notorious farm lobby for tarriffs against Brazil's sugarcane based ethanol. John McCain, later to become Obama's opponent, bluntly opposed the Iowa corn lobby on the tarriff against Brazil. Sugarcane based ethanol is more fuel efficient than Iowa's corn based ethanol. Economists continue to warn against using corn for ethanol in an artifical attempt to lower fuel imports. Corn diverted to brew ethanol to fuel American cars robs the world of corn based food driving up food scarcity. Pandering to sections of voters will be a recurrent pattern of the next four years.

Obama has never challenged conventional wisdom or populism. In midst of a world seething with fury against Wall street it does not take any courage to scold bankers or to call them 'fat cats'. What would have taken courage is to call for better and more capitalism. Wall Street's undoing was not capitalism but insufficient capitalism. It was Bush who, risking unpopularity and the wrath of his own party, bailed out Wall Street under terms that eventually benefiited the tax payer. It was also Bush who bailed out Detroit. Obama turned it to a reckless bailout to reward the unions and resulted in continued tax payer losses.

Withdrawing from Iraq was no brainer. The American taxpayer was exhausted, the war was controversial from the word go. What would have been intellectual was to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2009. The VP and many others counseled Obama to withdraw from Afghanistan too citing weak economy and the intractable mess the war was. Afraid of GOP backlash and with his eye on 2012 Obama tried to replicate Bush's Iraq 'surge' strategy. It is a grand failure today. If Obama had leveled with American people and refused a 'surge' for Afghanistan and vowed that pursuit of Bin Laden is still afoot that would have been a moment of leadership.

Unlike Bill Clinton's crusade in 1992 to reform health care in 2008 it was commonly agreed by all candidates and the American tax payer that the health care cost Leviathan needs to be hooked. The only contention was how to do it. Battle scarred Hillary Clinton presented a plan that included mandates. Obama cried foul and pontificated that his plan does not levy a 'tax', as he referred to mandate. Hillary and other experts disagreed that health care reform without mandate was not possible or cost effective. During Ohio primary Hillary exploded 'shame on you Barack Obama' for mischaracterizing her mandate as tax. As president Obama instituted mandate in his Affordable care act and the US Supreme Court later ruled that that was consitutional but called it a 'tax'

As President has Obama ever delivered bad news to a constituency that he depends on for re-election? Never. Not once. Standing before a gathering of hundreds of doctors Obama lobbied for his health care reform but started off with a stern message "I cannnot give you what you want" referring to doctors demand to reform malpractice lawsuits and institute caps on awards. Tort lawyers are a very influential democratic base and prodigious fund raisers too. It is easy to offend doctors than to risk offending his own fund raising base.This is not about opportunism. An intellectual articulates a difficult to swallow position and shepherds his constituency with logic and reason about a required change of course given new paradigms. Failing to do that is a signal failure of an intellectual.

America has a debt burden of $16 Trillion which is almost 100% of UD GDP. Entitlement programs are expanding exponentially beyond any fiscal sustenance. Obama's simplistic prescription is to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires under the pretext of asking them to pay 'their fair share'. Without going into the debate of whether millionaires and billionaires are paying their fair share lets look at the 'what-if' scenario of Obama getting his wish. The revenue thus raised will pay for only 72 hours of US Government expenses. This, to be polite, is intellectually dishonest shorn of any shred of intellectual integrity. A serious problem needs a serious answer not dishonesty.

That Obama, an Afro-American, became a President is justifiably characterized as a watershed moment, even a redemption. Many black commentators wrote that seeing a black first family inspires many afro-american kids. True. But within the Afro-American community there is widespread resentment against Obama administration, despite the immense pride that is there on the surface. Seeking to be seen as "president of all America" Obama, even where he could or should, has actively distanced himself from being seen as doing something targeted for Afro-Americans.

Jodi Kantor writes in New York Times, "At the first meeting of his top campaign donors last year, some black donors were dismayed when officials handed out cards with talking points on the administration’s achievements for various groups — women, Jews, gays and lesbians — and there was no card for African-Americans". Referring to Obama's quote that he is not only "President of Black America" Afro-American activist and scholar Cornel West said that statement “makes me want to vomit. Did you say that to the business round table?” he asked rhetorically. “Do you say that to Aipac?” (referring to a pro-Israel lobbying group).

Unemployment rages at 15%, twice the national average, for Afro-Americans. Appearing before the Congressional Black Caucus that was anxious to hear what President Obama can do. Obama borrowed a much revered Civil Rights era slogan and lectured "put on your marching shoes". That implied, for astute observers, that Afro-American community was sitting idle and not doing enough to lift itself. That was not Obama's intention. It was a speech delivered without much thought or sensitivity. Black Congresswoman Maxine Waters erupted "who was he talking to, we are hurting already". 

Even more shameful was the Shirley Sherrod episode. Shirley Sherrod, an Afro-American State Director of Rural Agriculture in Georgia, was falsely accused of being racist in refusing to help a white farmer. The whole incident was based on dishonest editing of a portion of her speech at a NAACP function. Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart broke that story. White House went into panic mode and was instrumental in making Shirley Sherrod resign. Sherrod is blistering in her recently released memoirs of how betrayed she felt that this happened in an Afro-American Presidency. Sherrod, as the full speech showed, had actually went out of her way to help the white farmer retain his land. When the full truth emerged the administration still did not offer her old job back, they only offered an 'equivalent'  position. Obama later called her and spoke telling her that he understands her and has written about her kind of experiences in his book. Sherrod simply told him that he could not have had her experiences. Sherrod grew up in racially charged in Georgia unlike Obama. Obama promised her to visit Georgia. Sherrod notes Obama is yet to keep his promise. If Bush had treated Shirley Sherrod like that the GOP would be called 'racist'.

In the aftermath of a rash of shootings that included hurting a congresswoman much was written about America's fetish for guns and the second amendment. The GOP, beholden as it is to the gun lobby, was shamefully, but understandably, silent on talking about gun controls. The acute disappointment was Obama's silence. The last President to sign a ban on assault weapons, A.K. 47's, was Bill Clinton. That ban lapsed in Bush's period and was not renewed. Obama, keen to be re-elected, completely ignored the gun control issue. This was a moment for a supposedly intellectual president to seize the issue and shape public opinion. Instead we only got more soaring rhetoric.

Obama is undoubtedly a very intelligent and very talented politician. But the more and more one looks at his record we only realise that this President is interested in only one thing, his political ambitions and success.

Eisenhower defined an intellectual as "one who takes more words than necessary to say more than what he knows". On that score Barack Obama is the most intellectual to ever occupy the Oval Office.

Bush, The Intellectual President

I never thought a day would come when I would argue that George W Bush was an intellectual.I came to USA in 1998 when the economy was booming and Clinton was widely praised for it. The GOP and Bush were repulsive to me especially with their accent on religion. During a republican presidential debate all candidates were asked to name a political philosopher who influenced them most. Bush said "Jesus Christ" and just looked away into the distant sky (or roof). I was angry at such an answer. Today I do not think so and with that a lot of my perceptions changed about Bush thanks in large measure due to Barack Obama.I used to be virulently anti-Bush and today I am not so. I still have criticisms of Bush's Iraq war and the deficits. I've not changed my views of Bush only because I have a visceral hatred of Obama's policies. I am not doing a volte face either. My views have changed simply because I've become far better informed than I used to be as a new immigrant in the early years of Bush. Second, my animosity towards religion is mellowed down as I see religion as a more constructive force, especially as it is used in USA compared to how Advani used it in India. Third, my understanding of economics has deepened considerably since I came to USA and of course it took some time to really shake off some decades old truisms that were beaten into an Indian's conscience (some of which apply to Americans too).

To define who is an 'intellectual' is a very difficult task. It surely should not be restricted to academic achievements or books that a person digests. It is not even just the ability to formulate ideas. Its more. One should be able to stand up for one's ideas and convince a skeptical audience of those ideas. One should be able to transcend the stereotypical image of the collective group of which one is a member of. And, yes, it includes willingness to change one's ideas in the face of new evidence. Bush has a stellar record on some of those benchmarks and a mixed record on some. How does he measure as an intellectual on balance? Let's see.

Bush campaigned on a humble foreign policy. He declared America will not be a "911 to the world" (referring to the number Americans dial for emergencies). A Republican candidate was arguing for a less muscular foreign policy harking back to the original isolationist tendencies of the GOP. Yet 9/11 prompted an immediate change and Bush realized that, for good or bad, America has to plunge headlong into tackling a global menace. It's like how an aging Godfather feels "just when I want to get out they pull me back right in".

Bush was lauded from the left and right for the moral clarity he brought to combating Al Qaeda. Lance Morrow writing for Time said this is a moment for 'purple rage' and told Americans not to allow themselves to be counseled. Only the far left naysayers like Noam Chomsky writhed in agony. It took a Romney candidacy for New York Times to find something redeeming in the Bush actions immediately after 9/11. NYT columnist wrote of a little spoken about visit by George Bush to a mosque after 9/11 to clearly signal that America is at war only with Al Qaeda and not with Islam. When a Muslim Secret service member was asked to get off a plane Bush, visibly angry, took to the bully pulpit with that agent standing next to him and declared that it was 'un-American' to treat his agent like that. Bush also recognized the need to revamp America's laws and re-organize America's security agencies. To Bush's credit his successor has not changed much of those laws and has only taken them further. Imitation is the best form of flattery.

It is GOP orthodoxy that Federal government should stay away from education which rightly belongs to states to legislate and manage. America's school system, unlike its Universities, suffers from deep malaise. Students not being tested and just moved from one class to another is a common sickness of American education. The man whom liberals love to deride as least intellectual and practically a dumb guy was the one who put education on the table to reform. Bush worked with arch ideological nemesis Ted Kennedy to create 'No Child Left Behind' law. Suddenly all of America was abuzz with talk of 'standardised testing' and 'teacher performance'. Bush stood up to his own party's orthodoxy and crafted a bi-partisan legislation working with Ted Kennedy of all people. Sure, the bill has its flaws and it can be improved. That applies to all legislation. The credit should go to the fact that Bush took an important issue head on and shaped public opinion and in the process led his party against its deeply held beliefs.

Bush's faith based initiatives were widely criticized when he formulated them. Given my experience of seeing politicians use religion to get votes in India I was appalled. I've mellowed since then after realizing how religion has a central and enriching role in the American society. Bush was seeking to use religious institutions, not just churches, as vital organs of society. Mac Arthur genius awardee and Afro-American scientist John Dabiri's interview in NPR was a catalyst in making me understand how churches play an integral role in many blighted neighborhoods in America. To characterise Bush's faith based initiative as theocracy does gross injustice to the program and only betrays the leaden thinking of liberals who wield their atheism as a badge of honor. The answer about Christ as political philosopher is very credible and not laughable I'd concede now. Christ's teachings have influenced many world leaders and it is not an answer to ridicule if one understands the role of religious texts in influencing many a world leader across history. If MLK Jr and Gandhi can draw succor from religion so can George Bush.

Bush's handling of stem cell funding came in for lot of criticism from many, including Nobel Laureate and former member of President's Council on Science, under Clinton, Harold Varmus. Bush, in his first nationally televised address, said he would not allow federal funding to stem cell studies that used embryonic stem cell EXCEPT the then current 2 lines that were being researched. Academics and liberals were in an uproar that the President sacrificed scientific progress at the altar of religious belief and party orthodoxy. I too thought so until I read Bush's detailed analysis in his book 'Decision Points'.

Embryonic stem cells are a tricky issue in the frontier of science where very disturbing questions do get thrown up. To be succinct, those stem cells were harvested from embryos that are often discarded after fertility treatments as either surplus or as useless. Bush, as pro-life GOP President, saw that as disturbing. Some of those embryos did hold a promise of life, babies born from such embryos are called 'snow flakes'. Bush was surrounded by 'snow flake babies' when he signed that order banning 'further' federal funds to such stem cells. Note, he only banned federal funds not private funds. Bush had consulted widely with scientists, bio-ethicists and religious people. He arrived at a careful thought out decision. Many cried that this was the end of stem cell research. It was not. Today such embryonic stem cells have been deemed unnecessary. I'd identify this as a key intellectual moment for which the liberal academics have been loath to recognize the president for. Let us also bear in mind that scientists have often egged on Presidents to recklessly pursue courses, like the arms race, in the name of science.

The nuclear deal signed with India was another intellectual moment. Bush nurtured India as a strategic partner and with the weight of the US Presidency he brought India onto the exclusive nuclear club while snubbing Pakistan. Today that deal is in the doldrums thanks to lack of leadership in both countries.

The day after his re-election Bush declared "I've earned political capital and I intend to spend it". He wanted to reform Social Security and Health care. Both proposals had merit to at least be considered. But the downward spiral of Iraq war stopped that.

Iraq is where Bush deserves much scolding. To be brief, no nation at that time could say with certainty that Saddam had no WMD's. All agreed Saddam was gaming the UN inspectors. Where the rest of the world disagreed was on what to do about it. Bush saw Iraq as unfinished job. He squandered US taxpayer money and lives in both countries. It was not a war for oil as Iraq later showed by NOT giving US many oil contracts. Lost in this din is also the fact that Iraq remains the only Islamic middle eastern country where women voted in elections and free elections were held. Bush ignored the Iraq study group recommendation to cut and run. Instead he fashioned the surge that his predecessor later copied for Afghanistan albeit without the political will. Iraq is still far from a liberal democracy but the Iraq that is today is entirely due to Bush. It is up to Iraqis to live up to their historic opportunities.

Bush would ask invitees as to why he is hated overseas, 'is it me or is the US Presidency'. Bush haters reveled that it was Bush who gave US a bad name. Nay. Irrespective of who occupies the White House  they will be hated by a large swath of people simply because its America. This was amply borne out when Obama was no more loved than Bush in the middle east. Bush was very respected in Eastern European nations though for standing up to Russia. Interestingly a Pew global survey indicated Bush was popular in India. Hindu majority population disgusted with the squeamishness of their own leaders in standing up to radical Islamism saw a ray of hope in Bush.

Obama has pulled of a propaganda victory in tying the 2008 financial crises to the Bush era. Bush cried hoarse about the need to rein in the reckless lending by Fannie and Freddie. As I pointed out earlier it was during the Clinton years that Wall Street was deregulated and given a free ride. Bush sacrificed populism to do the unthinkable for a GOP President. He bailed out both Wall Street and Detroit.


The dot-com bust of 2001 started under the Clinton watch and was entirely due to the 'irrational exuberance' of Clinton era yet I did not hear, by hindsight, Bush blame his predecessor as much as Obama whines and groans about his predecessor's 'failed economic policies'. Clinton often brags about the surplus he left behind which supposedly Bush squandered. Clinton's surplus evaporated in the dot-com bust and was totally gone immediately after 9/11.


One of the inflection points in how I viewed Bush was his conduct during the 2008 election season. As the country rapidly slid into a financial morass Bush refused to play favorites. He instructed all departments to keep both Obama and McCain equally informed of what is being done. Aware of how unprepared his new administration was on national security, taking over from Clinton, Bush worked to avoid it. He instructed his homeland security team to work with Obama's transition team on dry runs. Obama team, allegedly, balked thinking "hey what if something happens in the early days of our administration we cannot blame Bush then".

I've never understood how Kennedy, Clinton, LBJ, FDR are all revered as 'intellectuals' but not Reagan or Bush. All those that the liberals love have committed serious acts of omission or racism or plain recklessness and yet we are told to look at them as intellectuals. LBJ would personally pick bombing areas in Vietnam. Kennedy administration dropped orange gas in Vietnam. FDR interned Japanese Americans and embarked on a failed New Deal. Clinton threw away his second term simply because his pants had no zipper.

Bush had his share of omissions. Most notably Iraq but he found his stride on that. Towards the last days of Bush administration many in his circle thought that history will be kinder to Bush as it is towards Harry Truman. I think history will be kinder to Bush and harsher on Obama.