Six months into the Obama administration, the economy has gotten worse.  To be clear, I am not blaming the current president for the economic malaise we have plunged into; however, I am wondering if he really wants to empower the economy to recover.

It seems like ancient history at this point, but it is worth remembering the source of the present recession was the bursting of the housing bubble. Clinton and Bush policies once again made the economic equivalent of swampland in Florida a tasty looking investment.  Federally mandated lending policies created an artificial demand and wealth and derivatives that should have never existed in the first place evaporated practically overnight. Unemployment is now at 9.5% and the budget deficit has achieved a level higher than the nominal GDP of 167 countries.

The White House’s cryptic response is to find the most inefficient, haphazard ways to spend printed money possible, attack efficiency in the automobile industry by standing astride its creative destruction, yelling stop, before then helping deplete inventories by paying great sums for Pintos, before then offering to seize the operation of the economy’s single largest sector. Natch.*

This is truly a teachable moment: the president who wants to overhaul the $2 trillion health care industry is having problems budgeting to buy used cars.

What we are witnessing is a series of Disney-film inspired economic policies – it’s as if a herd of dancing hippos is running the White House economic desk.  Losing traction on practically everything, Bush bashing has come back into vogue. All of the sudden, the president who proclaimed he could do everything at once is dropping all the balls. Forgive me for taking him at his word.

In an effort to get in front of the predictable response, which seems to be obligatory when Democrats are screwing things up, there are  indeed solutions other than the economic antics offered up by this administration. Reduce the capital gains tax to free up real wealth and increase government revenues. Establish “bad banks” to clean up the balance sheets and revitalize the financial sector. Don’t spend $800 billion on basically nothing (want to know how that’s going? Just Google “stimulus spending” and read). Don’t pursue fiscal policies that will put upward pressure on inflation.

The dancing hippos are in charge and they are now targeting health care. We all ought to be worried.

* this is a friendly reminder that dissent is patriotic

Suffice it to say, the president’s efforts on health care reform have been marginally more graceful than a pigeon toed hedgehog schooled in the fine art of ballet. Clumsy is an understatement.

And he cannot blame the Republicans – not when you have a filibuster proof majority in the upper chamber and an overwhelming advantage in the people’s house. The blame for the delays, the message and the Democrat in-party dissension lie squarely at Barack Obama’s feet.

The object lesson here is not health care reform itself, as awful as his plan actually is, but more so about the president’s operating style. Arrogance has permeated everything the new administration has pursued, but it is not the same type of arrogance George W. Bush has been accused of displaying. Bush’s arrogance, if you can call it that, did come from a belief that his agenda would prevail, but it came from real world interaction and a steadfast belief that an American president sits upon a pedestal elevated above other leaders of the world.  The difference is that Obama eventually bought his own hype: he never realized that his meteoric rise in American politics was due to forces outside his control, entirely extrinsic to his own perceived political super powers. Bush fatigue, an indefatigably insatiable sycophantic media, and a weak opponent magnified his personal greatness, so much so that when asked to state which priorities he was going to tackle first when taking office, he said “all of them”.

This, of course, was either the statement of a mad man or a deluded one.  I do not think the president mad in the Mad Hatter sense, but his perception of his own reality is certainly delusional. Victory begets victory in politics. Instead of taking incremental steps, tackling issues that are surefire winners and easily accomplished with a two-house Democrat majority, he instead attempted to suspend the known laws of physics as they pertain to the political landscape.  In doing so, he has run into a buzz saw on his own side of the aisle.  In further display of his own personal misperception, in the middle of the debate that may very well define the first two years of his presidency, he chooses  to arrogantly interject himself into a local police matter, the side effect being that the president attempting to reform 17% of the world’s largest economy suddenly looks very, very small.

The greatest leaders may rise above the fray, but they cannot fully exist outside the realm of the physical reality they inhabit.  Those who made Barack Obama the extra-human candidate are now hapless to assist him when real scrutiny is applied to his plan and the early-message benefits of federal savings turn out to be at best a misleading tactic.  His approach on health care certainly is not indicative of someone fully grasping the office he inhabits. Perhaps he will grow in office, or, maybe 2010 will end up looking a lot like 1994.

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The time has come for me to part ways with MooreThoughts. For now, at least in the blogosphere, I guess I shall be keeping my thoughts to myself. While I have never even hired an intern or traveled to Argentina, I share the wise words of Stanley, Ensign, Stanford, etc., etc. when I write that I will be focusing on my family right now (except that I actually mean it and I didn’t do anything to disgrace my family that now requires my faux attention).

Appropriately enough, I leave you with a photo of the newest addition to my family. Ian Charles Moore was born on July 25 and joins a very proud big sister Catherine. My heart is so full with the overwhelming love I have for my daughter and son. I have discovered the ability of love to multiply when a second child enters the world, and it is awesome. I am one very blessed mommy!!

By now, it’s well known that GOP State Senator Paul Stanley from the 31st District has had an affair with an intern. He was extorted by said intern’s boyfriend, then in a move puzzling to me, decided to make the whole thing public by contacting law enforcement.  I mean, it was nice that he decided to resign his leadership position and all, but the truth is that’s not enough.  We are where we are now, and it’s time for Stanley to move on.

If we as Republicans are going to play the family values game in order to win elections, that means those who transgress have to be burned at the stake.  And not just burned, but roasted extra-crispy.

Which brings me to a broader point. We have seen a flurry of Tennessee Republican extra-marital activity in recent years. Being a criminal defense attorney, I am acutely aware that the criminals we know of are not the whole sum. Many are good at not getting caught. So it goes with politicians and sex.

Point is, plenty on our side of the aisle are “doing it”, so to speak, and we need to be adults and accept that is likely the case, then analyze whether putting the social conservative banner at the front of the parade is worth the inevitable damage to the Republican brand. This is not because such values are bad. They are good, but they have next to nothing to do with governing.  When politicians fail in this way, after stumping with great conviction about the evils of gay marriage (next issue, please), other ideological stands get hurt. Limited government, efficient government and low taxes are all more important in a governing sense. I don’t think there is a rational argument otherwise to be made.  If you are a conservative interested in limited government, the legislation of morals, ethics and mores ought to be anathema. It is Bush and Rove who brought us this form of politicking, and look around at the Party now. That is, if you can find any parts of it that aren’t shards on the floor.

And don’t feel too confident about Tennessee and Republican success here. We do not live in a vacuum.  We won here last year but got toasted everywhere else, and since the Supremacy Clause is an indisputably valid part of the Constitution that ought to concern us all.

It’s not that we should want some hedonistic drug user in a position of influence and power, but there are issues that independents and moderates become Republicans on, and those issues tend to be the ones underlying the pocketbook. We abdicated those under Bush, and through a series of marginal wins at the top, we became identified with the political charlatanism Paul Stanley came to embody. I’d rather offer the people something better than wait for the other guy to fail. There is a lesson here, if we are to learn it.

see, if we look at the map, I’m leaving to go over here

First off, I want to say I get it. We conservatives, much less Republicans, are in exile. The Democrats have a stranglehold on the House, the Senate became filibuster proof with a hack comic, and the party of Pelosi now occupies the White House.  I am frustrated and I am mad; however, the focus of my ire is not on the Democrats but on the fools that have run our great party into the ground. To paraphrase and adapt the words of the great charlatan, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, “We want out the Bushes!”.

And in our frustration, and desperation, we yearn for a guiding light. As in all aspects of life, desperation clouds judgment. Because of our predicament and present complete failure as a party, we reach. And reach. And reach.

What we have found is an initially charismatic individual, a governor from a small yet strategically important state, who generated buzz around a party nominee who otherwise made us ponder fondly the excitement surrounding Bob Dole’s 1996 campaign.

Then, as in all things Republican, you get out the Ronald Reagan ruler, the gold standard by which all pols residing on the right side of things are rightly measured.  Comparisons have abounded in recent days about how Sarah Palin is conservative “just like Ronald Reagan”, that the media elite sneer at her like they did Reagan. Or, that she is being shunned because she is not of the “establishment”.  Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan says it well in the Wall Street Journal

“Turning to others means the media won!” No, it means they lose. What the mainstream media wants is not to kill her but to keep her story going forever. She hurts, as they say, the Republican brand, with her mess and her rhetorical jabberwocky and her careless causing of division. Really, she is the most careless sower of discord since George W. Bush, who fractured the party and the movement that made him. Why wouldn’t the media want to keep that going?

(there’s more – read through the link). As a Republican who very much wants to win and regain our rightful place as the governing party of this great nation, I shudder that my compatriots are with great gusto throwing every ideological egg they own into the skipping movement that is Palinade.  It’s going to skip us right off the cliff, waving that conservative flag all the way down to the canyon floor.

The Reagan/Palin comparisons need to be debunked for many reasons, but primarily they are an insult to the fortieth president and a recipe for forty additional years in the wilderness. Through a lifetime, Ronald Reagan amassed a record of great achievement. From the near-beginning when he headed the Screen Actors Guild and established a strong anti-communist, tough managerial stance, to his years as the highest paid, most well-known speaker in the world, to his two terms as governor of the nation’s largest state, Reagan’s credentials were unmatched. Perhaps because our country just elected a man with less experience than the soon-to-be former governor of Alaska, our party politic seems to have forgotten there are two aspects to one’s political resume – one’s ideological positions and the beef one brings to the table. Neither is expendable, and just because we have witnessed an anomaly in the process with the election of our current president, we ought not be so eager to set the beef bar so low.

It should bother everyone that Sarah Palin could not finish even one term as governor of Alaska, a position of public trust she treats as if she got through Randstad.  Yes, she was facing ethical accusations. Yes, she would have had to technically finance her own defense if it came to that (believe that one if you want).  So, instead of serving the state by confronting and ridding the people of the irresponsible politicians making baseless accusations against her, she does what any movement leader ought to do in her first term in a constitutional position: she quits. It is not a noble path, to be sure, but it’s the standard we as a party seem willing and eager to accept.

Let us also not forget she could not answer the most basic policy questions in any of her interviews, or cite any authors of substance when asked. Neither is very Reaganesque of her, whose knowledge of foreign policy and history was extensive and unquestionable. When Reagan faced adversity in California, he defeated it. When Palin faced adversity in a state smaller than San Jose, she took out the white flag, a couple crayons, and tried to shade it in like the Stars and Stripes.

And we as a party are supposed to rally around that? I don’t think so.