Posts Tagged ‘china’
Who Is Winning the Budget Fight?
Apr21
By John Feehery
The President traveled to Facebook yesterday to make the case to his Facebook friends that he is still the same old Barack Obama, the mythical figure who would deliver us all from the evil of the Bush Administration, that he said he was when he electrified the voting public two short years ago.
The problem for St. Barack is that the voters are getting wise to his schtick.
According to the Real Clear Politics poll of polls, Mr. Obama is pretty much near his all-time high when it comes to his unpopularity. In January of 2009, only 19 percent of the voters disapproved of the job he was doing. Today, over 50% disapprove.
While Congress as a whole is less popular than the President, voters prefer Republicans more than they prefer Democrats to be elected to Congress, according to the latest surveys. Given that Republicans are taking on high-profile challenges, and given that the Democrats have already thrown up millions of dollars worth of ads attacking GOP budget votes, the fact that the Republicans haven’t completely fallen apart in the polls is remarkable.
Part of the problem for the President is the realities outside the realm of the Congress. Gas price increases make voters cranky and they tend to blame the guy who occupies the Oval Office. The increase in food prices also makes consumers mad. The President’s uncertain handling of the various crises that have hit the Middle East, more specifically his getting us involved in a shooting war in Libya without telling us about it, also must play a role.
And there is the fact that evidence is piling up that we are going really broke, really fast. Standard and Poor’s downgraded our debt rating. The lead investor for Pimco is telling people that he isn’t buying 30-year Treasuries any more. Neither are the Chinese. All of that has to make consumers and voters very uncomfortable.
The President’s response to all of this has been pretty weak. His much-ballyhooed speech on the deficit turned out to be another campaign defense of raising taxes and increasing government spending on health care. Even leading left-leaning newspapers are wondering why the President isn’t leading on the budget debate.
Paul Ryan, John Boehner and Eric Cantor are leading. Ryan’s budget is innovative, his approach is fresh, his appearance is youthful, his hair is kind of trendy. Boehner is cool, disciplined and hard to make a villain. Cantor is going to universities and talking about innovation in the market place, and making the connection between government budget responsibility and private sector growth. They are pushing forward, while the President is trailing behind. They are setting the pace, and Mr. Obama is panting just to keep up.
Mr. Obama went to Facebook to try to reconnect to younger voters, but polls show that while he still has a sizeable lead against the Republican field, his support is much less engaged and much less energized.
In the tug of war over the budget, it is the Republicans who are pulling harder, while Mr. Obama seems to be merely hanging on for his political life.
The Zenger Legacy
Feb2
By John Feehery
The Trial of Peter Zenger (1735)
In 1733, the newly appointed colonial Governor, William Cosby, charged John Peter Zenger, a publisher based in New York, with scandalous libel.
In one of the most important legal cases in our nation’s history, a defense team, led by Andrew Hamilton and supported by Benjamin Franklin, stopped the prosecution in its tracks and established an important and now sacred legal principle: It is not libel if it is true.
Zenger won the case when the jury overturned the law as established by the British Governor, and from that point in time, America was born.
From that solid foundation, American democracy would eventually flourish. From that foundation, Thomas Paine would pen the incendiary, but truthful “Common Sense.” From that foundation, Thomas Jefferson would write the Declaration of Independence. And from that foundation would spring our first amendment to the Constitution, which established not only the freedom of the press, but also the freedom of religion.
For some reason I thought of John Peter Zenger in the context of the current crisis in Egypt. The Egyptians never had their Zenger moment. And neither did most of the rest of the world.
It does not come easy to governing classes to take criticism, especially from the media. It does not come easy here either, and there have been plenty of Presidents who have tried to take steps to muzzle the critics, including John Adams, Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon.
But before America became America, John Peter Zenger already set the mold of the American model. Libel is not libel when it is true.
How much stronger would have Mubarak been had he allowed the freedom of the press? That is hard to say, because in Egypt, as in Russia, as in China, allowing criticism is seen as a weakness. But, stifling dissent radicalizes dissenters, giving them a reason to push for revolution instead of evolutionary change.
Mubarak failed not because he opposed the Muslim Brotherhood, but because he rigged the corrupt political system in his favor, because he failed to open up his socialist-leaning regime to true economic reforms and because he didn’t trust his own people enough to let freedom reign.
Methinks that what is happening in Egypt will happen eventually in Russia and China and all places that seek to stifle dissent. Where Zenger had a printing press, a device that revolutionized how information spread to a mass audience, Egyptians, Russians and Chinese now have Twitter and Facebook. It is easy for an oppressive government to kill a John Peter Zenger. It is much harder for them to kill hundreds of thousands of protesters, especially with CNN hanging around.
All of this speaks to progress, although there will be bumps in the road. It is likely that the new regime that replaces Mubarak won’t be as friendly to the United States government as Mubarak was. But maybe when the Egyptian people get a taste of freedom and the prosperity that usually comes with it, they will start liking America more.
People talk about how America is declining, about how we can’t compete with the Chinese or the Russians or the Indians. I don’t believe that. We have freedom on our side. And the legacy of John Peter Zenger.
