The work of the people is the work of the Holy Spirit

Simon Chan, “A Theological Understanding of the Liturgy as the Work of the Spirit”


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The most interesting part of my second day at the Worship Symposium at Calvin was Simon Chan's workshop on the liturgy as the work of the Holy Spirit.  Dr. Chan is a Pentecostal who teaches at Trinity Theological College, an ecumenical Christian seminary in Singapore; from the title and the interview he gave Christianity Today last year, I knew him to be rather more liturgically-minded than most Pentecostals, but I didn't expect him to ground his argument in the work of Eastern Orthodox theologians like John Zizioulas and Nikos Nissiotis—which is exactly what he did.  It was a fascinating argument and discussion about the way in which the Holy Spirit works on and in the church, and effectively takes on the shape of the church—the church, we might say, becomes the body of Christ by embodying the Holy Spirit.

I'll be a while processing what Dr. Chan had to say, I suspect; but I greatly appreciate his emphasis on the fact that the Spirit of God is always present with and at work in the church, and that it's the Spirit's ongoing work that constitutes the church.  That really drives home the point that we are entirely dependent on grace.

The importance of friendship in ministry

The Worship Symposium began today at Calvin; this year, I started off by taking a seminar on "Developing Pastoral Excellence," which turned out to be interesting in an unexpected way.  The presenter, the Rev. David Wood, is the director of Transition into Ministry, a program funded by the Lilly Foundation which seeks to aid and support pastors in the transition from the education process into the early years of their first call.  As such, he's been thinking a lot about what it means to be a good pastor and what is necessary for pastors to minister well; in so doing, in looking at all the list that various authors have generated of what makes an excellent pastor, he noticed "the sound of something missing":  he argued that an essential and unconsidered component of pastoral excellence is friendship.

In brief, his argument runs like this.  To be a good pastor, one must be a person of character and integrity and moral habit; as Aristotle (whom he quoted repeatedly) says, "We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."  To live in this way requires sustained moral effort; and to sustain moral effort, the Rev. Wood contends (following Aristotle), we need friends of character—deep, strong friendships with godly people whom we can trust implicitly.

This is true for a number of reasons.  For one, central to our work as pastors is our ability to maintain a proper balance of intimacy and distance with the people in our congregations, something we can't do if we're starved for intimacy ourselves.  For another, this requires a degre of self-knowledge which we can't manage on our own—we need people who know us well to reflect us back to ourselves, so that we can see them through their eyes.  For a third, we need support, reinforcement, encouragement, and sometimes a good swift kick or two from others if we're to live lives of excellence of character—none of us have the resources in ourselves to do that alone.

And fourth, we need friends to protect us from boredom.  The Rev. Wood argues that when you see a pastor in moral collapse, you're probably seeing someone who was bored with their life.  It's easy to grow bored with the things that matter most to us if we have no one with whom to share them; it's easy to forget why they matter.  We need others to help us remember, and to help us stay excited about and invested in them.  As long as we stay interested in what we're called to be doing, we stay energized about doing it, and invested in it.  When we get bored, we go looking for trouble—and usually find it.

Lessons from the mistakes of the Bush administration

courtesy of the Baseball Crank, who has put together an excellent and thoughtful list.

NB:  this is a list of mistakes—to wit, things that hampered President Bush and his administration in achieving their goals and purposes—not a list of policy disagreements.  To take the biggest one, the invasion of Iraq was not a "mistake."  You may think we never should have invaded Iraq, and history may prove you right or it may prove you wrong, but either way, that's not a "mistake"—it's a policy judgment with which you disagree.  That's a whole other list and a whole different set of questions and issues.

As such, almost all of the points on this list are apolitical; certainly the first eight are, and even the last two probably apply to Democrats as well as Republicans, though differently.  Most of these points have to do with matters of practical judgment such as personnel appointments and communication.

Laughing at Uncle Joe; or, is Joe Biden the new Dan Quayle?

I like what Ed Walsh has to say about this:

In an earlier post, I mentioned the trouble comedians were having coming up with a funny trope to use to poke fun at President Obama. The experts’ conclusion seems to be that Vice President Biden is the fattest target for humor in the Administration.

Now we see the story developing further. It’s not just Biden, see, but Obama’s reaction to Biden that is becoming a reliable comic routine. In this scenario, Barack Obama is Joe Biden’s straight man.

It’s promising. As this Politico clip of segments from “The Daily Show” and “The Tonight Show” makes clear, watching the habitually on-message president react to Biden’s howitzer-in-a-hurricane rhetorical style is pretty funny. And it offers the hint of a crack in Obama’s cool public face.

John Updike, RIP

If you'd asked me yesterday who was America's greatest living writer, I probably would ultimately have come down for John Updike; as the Wikipedia article on him puts it, "Updike was widely recognized for his careful craftsmanship, his highly stylistic writing, and his prolific output, having published more than twenty-five novels and more than a dozen short story collections, as well as poetry, art criticism, literary criticism and children's books."  He seemed to do everything, as a writer, and if not always brilliantly, he consistently managed to do it with insight and wit.  I particularly appreciate his willingness to be unfashionable in his opinions (as seen for instance in his piece "On Not Being a Dove").  Like the rest of his contemporaries, he was no longer at his best as a writer, but his death today of lung cancer is a great loss to the republic of American letters—with his independence of mind, I think, being the greatest loss of all.

An unexamined faith is . . . what?

In my previous post, commenting on James Hitchcock's Touchstone editorial "Subject to Change," I discussed the main body of his argument, but I didn't address his closing comment, which might be the most interesting thing he has to say:

One of the oldest and deepest assumptions of Western civilization is that the unexamined life is not worth living, and it is a perplexing theological conundrum to what extent real faith exists if the possibility of rejecting it does not exist also.

This is in one way a logical conclusion to his piece, since it does connect directly to the burden of his argument; this is really the core question underlying the issue he raises.  Put like this, however, this closing paragraph is also an opening paragraph to an article (or a book) not yet written, as it opens out onto a whole new field of discussion.  

For my part, I tend to think this is a question without a definitive answer—that it really depends on the person; it does seem clear, though, that an unexamined or unchallenged faith, if not necessarily less real, is at least far less robust than a faith that has had to confront and address the possibility of unbelief.  As well, those whose faith is never questioned are not likely to learn to question and evaluate themselves, and thus their faith will probably tend to be shallower, and to engage life in a more superficial fashion.  I don't think we can look down on those whose faith is sheltered, but we can say that it's an open question whether they've put their roots deep enough to survive the storms if and when they come.

My brothers and sisters, consider it entirely as joy when you face trials of many kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfast endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

—James 1:2-4

Modernity as universal cultural acid

James Hitchcock has a truly remarkable editorial in the latest Touchstone which asks a penetrating question:  can traditional societies survive the power of modernity?  He writes,

A closed traditional society finds it almost impossible to effect an orderly and controlled transition to modernity. Religion dominates all aspects of life to the extent that no distinction is made between matters of faith and mere custom. . . .

Thus, it proves psychologically impossible to discard those things in traditional society that have outlived their legitimacy without thereby setting off global change. The changing culture fosters a half-conscious conviction that truth lies roughly in asserting the opposite of what one previously believed. Changes cannot be evaluated rationally, because people are carried along by a euphoric sense of having liberated themselves from long-standing, narrow oppressiveness.

Modern society offers an opportunity to exercise freedom in the fullest sense, an exercise that exposes the facts that what passes for deep conviction may be for many people merely a brittle social conformity, and what passes for morality may be the mere absence of opportunities for sin.

Muslims who see the United States as the Great Satan reject the good of political liberty along with the poisonous moral licentiousness that such liberty permits. They perceive the ambiguity of modernity itself, most of which either originated in the United States or has been propagated through American influence.

But for that very reason the antibodies to modern cultural viruses also exist most robustly in the United States, which is practically the only society in the Western world where moral traditionalists have an effective voice in public affairs.

Religious belief is stronger in America than anywhere else in the West partly because believers have had to find ways of living their faith without the kind of social supports that, historically, were provided in countries with established churches.

This is an interesting explanation for America's unusual religious culture, and one that makes a great deal of sense; but if he's right to suggest that "the forces of modernity—political, economic, and cultural—really are irresistible and that sooner or later almost every society in the world will have to face them," then the implications of his argument must be faced as well, because they are of great significance.  As he says,

If that assumption is correct, it is better to experience modernity sooner rather than later, in order to make use of what is good in it and to learn to cope with what is bad. Simple quarantine is no longer possible. . . .

Both for societies and for individuals, our cultural situation is tragic in the classical sense, because it requires decisions none of which are free of possible bad consequences. Maintaining a rigorously closed society may protect generations of people from the worst evils of modernity, even as it virtually guarantees that later generations will be infected all the more virulently. But alternatively, allowing people a good measure of freedom inevitably leads to abuse.

While, from a Christian perspective, one may well call the consequences of this situation for the church tragic, there is a silver lining as well:  if Hitchcock's overall thesis is correct, then that applies not only to Christian societies but also to Muslim societies as well.  This suggests that while traditionalist Islamic societies will no doubt succeed in resisting modernity for some time—which is, I believe, the driving concern behind the rise of Islamism in its various forms, including its most virulent strain, jihadism—they cannot resist forever; eventually, the Islamic world will see its own version of Quebec's "Silent Revolution," and the collapse of radical Islam, leaving much of the Islamic world looking much like the once-Christian nations of western Europe.  This offers hope that, in our conflict with militant Islam as with the Cold War against global communism, if we will stand strong and not surrender, we will see a Berlin Wall moment.

The state of the media and the sphere of legitimate debate

I read an interesting article yesterday on why the Internet weakens the authority of the press (thanks to a link from JMHawkins in the comments on this post on the probable closure of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and why that matters; the post deals specifically with sports coverage, but the points it makes are broader in application).  The article, posted by Jay Rosen on PressThink (which looks like it might be a blog for the blogroll), deals with the following diagram from the 1986 book The "Uncensored War":  The Media and Vietnam by Daniel C. Hallin:

Rosen describes these three spheres in this way:

1.) The sphere of legitimate debate is the one journalists recognize as real, normal, everyday terrain. They think of their work as taking place almost exclusively within this space. (It doesn’t, but they think so.) Hallin: “This is the region of electoral contests and legislative debates, of issues recognized as such by the major established actors of the American political process.” . . .

2. ) The sphere of consensus is the “motherhood and apple pie” of politics, the things on which everyone is thought to agree. Propositions that are seen as uncontroversial to the point of boring, true to the point of self-evident, or so widely-held that they’re almost universal lie within this sphere. Here, Hallin writes, “journalists do not feel compelled either to present opposing views or to remain disinterested observers.” (Which means that anyone whose basic views lie outside the sphere of consensus will experience the press not just as biased but savagely so.)

Consensus in American politics begins, of course, with the United States Constitution, but it includes other propositions too, like “Lincoln was a great president,” and “it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can succeed in America.” Whereas journalists equate ideology with the clash of programs and parties in the debate sphere, academics know that the consensus or background sphere is almost pure ideology: the American creed.

3.) In the sphere of deviance we find “political actors and views which journalists and the political mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard.” As in the sphere of consensus, neutrality isn’t the watchword here; journalists maintain order by either keeping the deviant out of the news entirely or identifying it within the news frame as unacceptable, radical, or just plain impossible. The press “plays the role of exposing, condemning, or excluding from the public agenda” the deviant view, says Hallin. It “marks out and defends the limits of acceptable political conduct.”

Anyone whose views lie within the sphere of deviance—as defined by journalists—will experience the press as an opponent in the struggle for recognition.

Rosen analyzes the work of the press in terms of these categories, and makes some interesting points:

That journalists affirm and enforce the sphere of consensus, consign ideas and actors to the sphere of deviance, and decide when the shift is made from one to another— none of this is in their official job description. You won’t find it taught in J-school, either. It’s an intrinsic part of what they do, but not a natural part of how they think or talk about their job. Which means they often do it badly. Their “sphere placement” decisions can be arbitrary, automatic, inflected with fear, or excessively narrow-minded. Worse than that, these decisions are often invisible to the people making them, and so we cannot argue with those people. It’s like trying to complain to your kid’s teacher about the values the child is learning in school when the teacher insists that the school does not teach values. . . .

Deciding what does and does not legitimately belong within the national debate is—no way around it—a political act. And yet a pervasive belief within the press is that journalists do not engage in such action, for to do so would be against their principles. As Len Downie, former editor of the Washington Post once said about why things make the front page, “We think it’s important informationally. We are not allowing ourselves to think politically.” I think he’s right. The press does not permit itself to think politically. But it does engage in political acts. Ergo, it is an unthinking actor, which is not good. When it is criticized for this it will reject the criticism out of hand, which is also not good.

This is, I think, essentially correct, and is a more helpful way of understanding media bias than simply using categories of left and right; among other things, it’s a more nuanced model, allowing room for what he refers to as “complications,” such as the point that these spheres cannot be understood monochromatically:

Within the sphere of legitimate debate there is some variance. Journalists behave differently if the issue is closer to the doughnut hole than they do when it is nearer the edge.

That said, to make use of this model it is necessary to map it to the political spectrum in this country; and that, of course, is where disputes arise.  Rosen is clearly a man of the left, and those who engage with him would seem to be even more so; for him, and for them, it seems to be axiomatic that the media’s understanding of the sphere of consensus is wrongly shifted in a conservative direction—and thus, to put the matter in standard terminology, that the media is biased against liberals.  

From where I stand, that seems nonsensical.  But then, as Rosen might say, this isn’t really a dispute about the media at all:  it’s a political dispute based on the differing understandings of conservatives and liberals about what properly belongs in each sphere.  As such, it is in fact an inevitable political dispute over the most basic part of any political discussion:  the definition of the terms of that discussion.  This is why Markos Moulitsas (the Kos of Daily Kos, for anyone who might not know) said in his response to Rosen’s post,

The person who controls the [conventional wisdom] controls the terms of the debate. Modern activism is in large part a battle to capture that CW.

Of course, the ultimate purpose of Rosen’s article is to apply this analysis to the rise of the blogosphere, about which he makes an interesting point:

In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized—meaning they were connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the “sphere of legitimate debate” as defined by journalists doesn’t match up with their own definition.

I think he’s right about that; but in truth, I think he doesn’t go far enough.  It’s not just that journalists’ definition of the sphere of legitimate debate doesn’t match up with “their” definition—it’s that there is no one “they,” and thus that we may wind up with the national conversation being atomized instead as different groups insist on their differing definitions of the various spheres.  We have people, for instance, working very hard to define “Sarah Palin is an idiot” into the sphere of consensus for purposes of political expedience, and others working very hard to move that statement into the sphere of deviance on the grounds that it’s objectively untrue.  

The danger of this sort of conflict is that it may tend to replace legitimate debate over issues with arguments over whether issues are legitimate—a sort of meta-debate which is not likely to prove productive.  Disputes over definitions are, as I said, inevitable in any political conversation; but when they’re used as a proxy to avoid actually having the conversation, that’s unhealthy for democracy.  

The great advantage of the political blogosphere is that bloggers, unlike journalists, are open about their partisanship, thus putting the inevitable biases in the foreground and allowing readers to take them into account.  The great disadvantage is that one can always use one’s partisanship as an excuse to treat one’s opponents solely on one’s own terms, rather than putting in the hard work to consider them on their own terms, and thus to give them credit for their good intentions.  Doing so may not be the best thing we can do for our own political agenda—but it is the best thing we can do for the health of our country.

Thought on worship and idolatry

Human beings have an instinctive tendency to idolatry.  That might seem a strange thing to say in the West, where we don’t have big statues standing around for people to bow down to, but it’s true.  For one thing, we were made to worship, and have a bent that way; if we don’t consciously worship God (or some other god), we will usually find ourselves coming unconsciously to worship something else.

This might sound like a strange thing to say, but take a look around. Take a look, not at people’s formal religious affiliations, but at where they put their money, their time, and their trust, and what do you see? You see entertainment; you see possessions; you see, perhaps, investments; with some people, you see their ambitions, whether social, political, or economic; you see relationships, certainly; and you see a lot of people who put most if not all of their money, time, and trust, quite frankly, in themselves. Now, some of these are purely good things—for example, if I didn’t spend money and time on my wife and kids, I’d get a lot of questions, not least from them—and none of them are evil; but the pattern is another matter. As Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart,” and it’s even truer that where your trust is, there is your heart; we might say, going further, that where your trust and treasure are together, there is your true worship, and the true focus of your attention.

Worship isn’t just about going and participating in a formal service somewhere, although that’s what we associate with the word; worship is about giving honor, and according someone (or something) a place of particular importance in our lives.  The word “worship,” in its older English form, was “worthship”; it meant to ascribe worth to something, to see that thing as having worth, as being important, and to treat it accordingly. Now, the word “worship” has come to have a more specific meaning, a formally religious one, but that old meaning is still at the core of it—it means to treat something or someone as of greatest worth, and to behave accordingly.

This is perfectly natural; indeed, we might say it’s necessary, or even inevitable.  The problem is, in our pride, we resist according that place to God, because doing so means giving up control—or, at least, the illusion of control—and so we have the tendency to turn instead to things, or to the self, to find security and peace and meaning in life instead of turning to God.  That way, by giving pride of place to nothing greater than the self, we remain free from being told what to do (as long as circumstances permit, anyway).  The problem is, in so doing, we put our trust and our hope in things which simply cannot bear the weight, and so—sooner or later—they fail us.

(Partially excerpted from “Can You Do This?”)

This is shameful

According to the Anchorage Daily News,

The Army is terminating retirement credit for time served in a largely Native militia formed to guard the territory of Alaska from the threat of Japanese attack during World War II.

The change means 26 surviving members of the Alaska Territorial Guard—most in their 80s and long retired—will lose as much as $557 in monthly retirement pay, a state veterans officer said Thursday. The pay claims of 37 others have been suspended. . . .

The action comes almost a decade after Congress passed a law qualifying time served in the unpaid guard as active federal service. The Army agreed in 2004 to grant official military discharge certificates to members or their survivors.

This is just wrong.  For what it's worth, it sounds like this doesn't come from the Army itself, but from somewhere in the DoD:

The reversal follows an analysis by the Department of Defense that determined that the Army is not authorized in the law to count territorial guard service for the purpose of calculating retirement pay, said Lt. Col. Richard McNorton, the Army's human resources command in Alexandria, Va.

"The focus is to follow the law," he said. "We can't chose whether to follow the law. We have to follow the law."

Whether that's a reasonable interpretation of the law or just the sort of thing you could expect some government bean counter to come up with, I don't know, but it needs to be set right—and if that means changing the law again, then we need to change the law again.  These are people who served this country, and they're now old and vulnerable; it's not appropriate to try to save money by taking away benefits our government had agreed to give them for their (unpaid) service.  I think the state of Alaska has it right on this:

"This is earned income and it's not being paid," said Jerry Beale of the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

Gov. Sarah Palin said the state is pursuing a remedy for "these brave Alaskans, who did so much for the cause of freedom during a time of great national peril." . . .

"It took nearly 60 years before the federal government honored these defenders of our territory for their service," Palin said in a statement. "While most died waiting for this recognition, the few who survive are now being told their Territorial Guard service is not worthy of federal recognition. This is unacceptable. These people are no less heroic than the militias at Lexington and Concord, or the defenders of the Alamo."

HT:  Conservatives4Palin

Channeling Dubya, Part III

Match the speech to the president:

[T]he world has watched with growing concern the horror of bombings and burials and the stark picture of tanks in the street. Across the world, people are grieving for Israelis and Palestinians who have lost their lives.

When an 18-year-old Palestinian girl is induced to blow herself up, and in the process kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl, the future, itself, is dying—the future of the Palestinian people and the future of the Israeli people. We mourn the dead, and we mourn the damage done to the hope of peace, the hope of Israel’s and the Israelis’ desire for a Jewish state at peace with its neighbors; the hope of the Palestinian people to build their own independent state.

America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats.  For years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror.  To be a genuine party to peace . . . Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements.

The Palestinian people are blessed with many gifts and talents. They want the opportunity to use those gifts to better their own lives and build a better future for their children. They want the dignity that comes with sovereignty and independence. They want justice and equality under the rule of law. They want freedom from violence and fear.

The people of Israel have just aspirations, as well. They want their children to be able to ride a bus or to go to school without fear of suicide bombers. They want an end to rocket attacks and constant threats of assault. They want their nation to be recognized and welcomed in the region where they live.

Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians. . . . Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water, and basic medical care, and who've faced suffocating poverty for far too long. Now we must extend a hand of opportunity to those who seek peace.

Today, Palestinians and Israelis each understand that helping the other to realize their aspirations is key to realizing their own aspirations—and both require an independent, democratic, viable Palestinian state. Such a state will provide Palestinians with the chance to lead lives of freedom and purpose and dignity. Such a state will help provide the Israelis with something they have been seeking for generations: to live in peace with their neighbors.

Lasting peace requires more than a long cease-fire, and that's why I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security.

We meet to lay the foundation for the establishment of a new nation—a democratic Palestinian state that will live side by side with Israel in peace and security. We meet to help bring an end to the violence that has been the true enemy of the aspirations of both the Israelis and Palestinians.

President George W. Bush, or President Barack Obama?  The answer will be posted in the comments.

Lemon socialism

What a great coinage.  That's how Robert Reich describes our current economic model, as the bailouts spread:

Put it all together and at this rate, the government—that is, taxpayers—will own much of the housing, auto, and financial sectors of the economy, those sectors that are failing fastest. . . .

It’s called Lemon Socialism. Taxpayers support the lemons. Capitalism is reserved for the winners.

Too true.  Painfully true, in fact.  It's not the sort of thing one usually hears from liberals (especially under circumstances in which even conservatives have been advocating big government spending), but that only makes his comments all the more important, and the warning they contain all the more urgent.

HT:  Jennifer Rubin

Neil Young in serious collision with English language

My thanks to the Baseball Crank for calling attention to this "catastrophic failure of copy-editing" from an Australian interview with Neil Young.

Latest anti-Sarah Palin tactic: Tie her down

The latest effort by liberals in their ongoing campaign to neutralize Sarah Palin is to keep her from leaving Alaska to attend events like CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) on the grounds that she's "not putting Alaska first" if she does events outside the state.  Now, I realize that folks on the Left don't really care whether this is true or not; they simply want to use this to accomplish two things:  one, to keep her from providing leadership and energy to a national GOP that badly needs both; and two, they hope, to chip away at her popularity in Alaska enough that they can defeat her in next year's election.  That said, they clearly think that Alaskans will buy the charge, or else they wouldn't be complaining about this.  For my part, I hope that the people of Alaska don't buy it, because to do so would be remarkably short-sighted.

To explain why I say this, let me use myself as an example.  I have more reason to think about Alaska than most Americans in the Lower 48.  I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, in western Washington, near the coast.  I have friends who live in Alaska year-round, and others who spend part of the year up there.  My parents have made several trips to Alaska; in consequence, my three girls have a number of Alaska books and T-shirts.  When I was looking for a church in 2006-07, there were congregations in a couple places in Alaska that I really wanted to talk to, until my wife reminded me that my mother-in-law would filet me alive if I took her grandchildren that far away from Michigan.  (We ended up in Indiana instead.  Less scenic, but definitely safer.)

And how often did I think about Alaska before I started researching Gov. Palin?  Occasionally.  Very occasionally.  How often do I think about Alaska now?  A good deal more often.  I know a lot more about the state, its issues, and its contributions to the health and strength of our nation than I did.  Why?  Because of Gov. Palin—because her arrival on the national political scene brought her state into the national political consciousness in a whole new way.

As a consequence, I think it's fair to say that for Gov. Palin to be speaking and making appearances around the country, including on major media, would not be putting Alaska second or shortchanging her home state (as long as she continues to carry out the responsibilities of her job, at least, which I have no doubt she will); rather, for her to do so would be a real benefit to the Great Land, because in keeping her own profile high, she will keep Alaska's profile high as well—and that can only be a good thing for this most federally-dependent state in the Union.

Why America needs Sarah Palin

This is Gov. Palin's 2009 State of the State address, which she wrote herself; the video of the speech is posted at the end of the text.  For those who may have forgotten (since it's been so long, on a national level), this is what a conservative government looks like:

Thank you. Our good Lieutenant Governor Parnell, President Stevens, Speaker Chenault, lawmakers, Native Leaders, my dear family, and all Alaskans. Thank you for this opportunity.

First, please join me in thanking those who protect our freedoms that allow us to assemble—our good men and women in uniform—they are America's finest, our U.S. military.

It's been quite a year since we last gathered in this chamber. Just two days ago we witnessed a shining moment in the history of our country. Millions of Americans are praying for the success of our new president, and I am one of them. His work is cut out for him, but if President Obama governs with the skill, grace and greatness of which he is capable, Alaska's going to be just fine. We congratulate President Obama.

And, for keeping the homeland safe, and being a friend to Alaska, I thank President Bush.

2008 was the year when America looked to Alaska, and one of our own sprang to national attention. There was political drama, controversy, lively debate, a few awkward moments and in the end, some disappointment. But what a glorious debut for a unique Alaskan—and we congratulate our former Senator Mike Gravel.

In the history of Alaska, it was also the conclusion of a long and distinguished Senate career. We look forward to working with his successor, Senator Mark Begich. The best to our new man in Washington. And to working with long-serving Representative Young and Senator Murkowski. Congratulations on her worthy committee assignments.

Tonight, I'm pleased to see new faces here, and I appreciate all who have sworn to uphold our constitution. Newcomers, some say we have some pretty strong differences among us, and, well—subtlety is not always one of our strong points. But we try to keep things friendly and civil, and we've been known to actually succeed.

I used to wonder if the occasionally rough edges of politics were unique here under the Great North Star. But I ventured out a bit this past year, and I tell you that, as partisan quarrels go, ours really aren't so bad. At our best, we are forthright in our opinions, charitable in our judgments and fair just like the people who hired us to work for them.

Today, when challenges may seem as high as Mt. McKinley, and change as constant as the mighty Yukon flows, and political events send shockwaves through our foundation like the '64 quake—what do Alaskans do? We climb Denali, we forge the river, we rebuild a stronger foundation on higher ground. When it matters most, lesser differences fall away. Just like family, Alaskans unite.

It was this kind of determined action that turned the northland wilds into a territory, a territory into a state, and that state, across 50 years, into a land of industry, opportunity, and enduring beauty. And now that perseverance is needed again, as we go through a time of testing for our country—a time of economic worry for many Alaskans—a time of challenge to the wisdom and resolve of state government.

Governor Wally Hickel said he feared more than any economic depression—a depression of the spirit. Alaska, it's time we revive the optimistic, pioneering spirit that our founding mothers and fathers birthed in our State Constitution! As we celebrate statehood—let that spirit rise now, and our actions correspond as our founders intended.

See, we have that choice, how to respond to circumstances around us. As public servants, will we draw from a servant's heart the resolve to put pettiness and power struggles aside and work together for the good of the people? We have the choice. I speak for the entire Palin/Parnell Administration when I declare we choose optimism and collaboration and hard work to get the job done.

It starts with a frank assessment of our economy and our budget. We have natural advantages to defer some effects of the global recession. Our banks have good liquidity, our credit market is relatively strong, home foreclosures are lowest in the nation. That's the upside of a regional economy. The reverse side, our unemployment rate is about the national average—over seven percent, which means thousands of Alaskans need jobs. And when our budget is 90 percent reliant on the value of energy resources, there are consequences.

Two years ago at this podium, I urged spending restraint. I asked that billions of surplus funds be deposited in state savings. This struck me as a simple precaution against, as I described it, massive single-year cuts down the road, if and when we faced tougher times. You legislators agreed, so we can now meet our challenge in a stronger position.

And you understood the challenge is not just to think fast and change plans when the price of oil suddenly falls, affecting revenue by billions of dollars. The challenge is to follow a consistent plan despite inconsistent prices.

With prudence, you built our reserves—that was good planning. This national economic downturn that's spread to the energy market—it found us prepared. And that's more than many states can say about their financial situation.

When oil prices and state revenue are on the rise, as was the case, there's temptation to assume it'll go on rising forever, and to spend accordingly. Since prices fell, there may be an equal temptation to draw heavily on reserves or, for some, to be tempted to tap the permanent fund earnings or tax our hardworking families.

No. With the budget, the aim is to keep our economy on a steady, confident course. The aim is—with discipline—we protect our reserves and promote economic growth.

Now, unless the price of a barrel of oil dramatically increases, soon, we're looking at a potential revenue shortfall in excess of a billion dollars this year. So with a close eye on price, we need to be willing to curtail spending as needed. If there's a shortfall, there are options. It'll take a cooperative spirit all around to see us through the uncertainty.

I had proposed we start with an overall reduction of seven percent from last year's expenditures. This is a real reduction, not just a reduction in the rate of spending increases—as cuts are often defined elsewhere. That's transparency in budgeting—just as the public saw when we put the state's checkbook online. We stand ready to work with lawmakers—who hold the purse strings—to amend the budget, as we receive revenue updates in weeks ahead.

Last year, we all expected another surplus. But even then, with record high prices, I chose prudence and directed state commissioners to cut millions in operating costs.  Finding efficiencies even during times of plenty—that's common sense fiscal responsibility.  Now, obviously, circumstances have changed that even international seasoned oil experts could not predict, requiring us now to adjust even more. Therefore, I am implementing a hiring freeze, exempting public safety, and I am restricting non-essential purchases. These actions reduce the draw on savings as we monitor revenue for the rest of 2009.

For too long, Alaska's economy has struggled with fluctuating revenue due to global commodity prices.  In a volatile economy, numbers are not fixed, but principles are. We've followed the same principles from the start of this administration: fiscal discipline, limited government, and responsible stewardship.

At a time when other state legislatures are staring at multi-billion-dollar deficits, and when our federal government proposes a deficit in excess of a trillion dollars this year alone, we have all the cautionary examples we need in the virtues of living within our means. With less revenue, we have an obligation to spend less money.

With our share of federal funds and Congress' stimulus package, our obligation is equally clear: we must ensure these public funds serve vital needs—as is the case of infrastructure for our gas pipeline, needed by the nation; and the Kodiak Launch Facility, adding to national defense. President Obama pledged not to let this stimulus package devolve into the past familiar scene of politicians lining up for obscure earmarks. This is reform at work.

Thankfully, in the state, these past couple of years we've allocated billions for roads, ports, schools, and other vital public works. That money hits the streets and grows the economy this year—so the private sector creates, and we keep, many thousands of good Alaskan jobs through this.  We can stay on that path of investment in growth with continued support for essential construction projects that will—literally—build this state.

Now, we can't buy into the notion that for government to serve better, it must always spend more. Reductions we support are a chance to show the true measure in public policy. Simply increasing budgets every year, a common government practice, is no guarantee of success. More often, it's an incentive to failure. Good public policy is accountable for results, and focused on critical priorities.

We promised public education reform—so schools can plan ahead, and bureaucracies do not smother a school's creativity or a student's aspiration. We now take the next step in our three-year education plan—to offer every young Alaskan—rural and urban—the opportunity to learn and work and succeed in the world. We'll fully forward-fund all our school districts with more than a billion dollars—that's more than 21 percent of General Fund expenditures. Education is that high a priority. We'll focus on early learning, vo-tech and workforce development, an enhanced University, streamlined operations, we'll hold schools accountable, and we'll encourage opportunities for students with special needs.

One of the great privileges given to me last year was the chance to be a witness for the truth that every child has value; to say to special needs children that they are beautiful and loved. And needed. We learn more from them than they from us. Across America, a great change is coming in public policy affecting these children, and Alaska can lead the way. This is a part of the culture of life where every child is cherished and protected.

In this chamber, we share a commitment to serious health-care reform. We've learned from experience that all the answers do not come from Washington. When Congress turns to health-care reform this year, we look to our delegation to make the case for greater competition, more private sector choices, and less litigation in the health-care market. But we're not going to wait. Here, reform can move forward without delay.

I look forward to working with you on adjustments to kid's health insurance. We'll fund more early screening - for example, for autism—because early detection makes all the difference. We'll focus on preventing disease and promoting healthy living. I'll ask that physical education be incorporated into daily school schedules, too.

We have alarming levels of heart disease, diabetes, childhood obesity—and all of these maladies are on the rise. Now, I won't stand here and lecture—for very long—but health care reform on an individual basis is often just this simple: we could save a lot of money, and a lot of grief, by making smarter choices.  It starts by ending destructive habits, and beginning healthy habits in eating and exercise. In my case, it's hard to slack when you have the ever-present example of an Iron Dogger nearby. But many of us could use a little more time in our great outdoors—and when you live in the Great Land, there's no excuse.

Protecting good health is largely a matter of personal responsibility, but government policy can help. Our new Alaska Health Care Commission will recommend changes that affect the well-being of Alaskans far into the future. So, a healthier Alaska via personal responsibility, and subsisting more on our pure and plentiful Alaskan food sources! It's why we protect our waters and soils from pollutants, and it's a reason we manage our wildlife for abundance.

To ensure this, we've successfully brought the Habitat Division back into Fish and Game, as I promised. Our biologists have protected game by eliminating predators from calving grounds and we'll further protect herds, some of which are at precariously low levels of abundance—thus ultimately promoting the population growth of every species.

We're building viable personal use and commercial fisheries in some of the most controversial and complex fisheries in the world, dealing with half a dozen foreign countries, including Japan, Russia and Canada. We're establishing sustainable seafood stocks, and limiting salmon bycatch in the trawl fishery. We've increased research on salmon runs, and we're building new hatcheries for vibrant industry.

As the largest and only Arctic state, we're studying climate-change through our DEC-led subcabinet. And we're suing the federal government for misusing the Endangered Species Act. There is an attempt there to use the ESA to impose environmental policies that should be debated and approved legislatively, not by court order or bureaucratic decree. Alaskans have shown through our protective laws that we're willing and able to protect our magnificent wildlife, while developing our God-given resources, by using conservation laws as they were intended. We'll challenge abuse of federal law when it's used just to lock up Alaska.

Vital projects now underway show how much science and technology have improved in a generation, greatly reducing risk to the environment. Continued work in Cook Inlet and on the North Slope, new drilling at Nikaitchug, new exploration in NPRA—these projects and more will be carried out with the safest methods. My administration has dramatically ramped up oversight. We demand the highest standards of stewardship and corporate responsibility, because we want to pass on this Alaska that we cherish to our children and grandchildren and beyond.

And just as we strive to keep our environment safe, we're dedicated to keeping Alaskans safe. We've finally filled vacant trooper positions this fall and we have several innovative initiatives moving, like a Highway Patrol Bureau focused on road safety and DUI enforcement. And I'm excited about the Troop to Trooper program, which offers our National Guard hometown heroes careers in law enforcement.

These priorities should be a powerful incentive to think clearly and act decisively—not politically —in pursuit of funding them with our next economic lifeline: the gasline. Without revenues from developing clean natural gas, priorities can't be funded, and we will deplete reserves within a decade. Working together, we're developing a 10-year plan to keep a healthy balance in the Constitutional Budget Reserve. We're laying up stores, until strong revenue comes in with the flow of natural gas to feed hungry markets here and outside.

Unfortunately, some focus only on potential obstacles when they discuss projects like the gasline: the giants in the land preventing us from gathering fruit. But as I recall, we've already slain a few giants. Remember TAPS 30-some years ago? Alaskans were told the oil line was impossible. And then, all those years when this capitol was filled with talk about a $40 billion gasline, but that's all it ever amounted to—talk, and closed door deals? Working with you, we shook things up, and passed Ethics Reform and AGIA and ACES. By inviting the private sector to compete for the right to tap our resources, we now have two major efforts underway to commercialize gas—without surrendering Alaska's sovereignty.

The big line will be the work of years. Last month we took another step closer to steel pipe when we signed the license with TransCanada-Alaska. To further develop, we're commissioning preliminary work on a road to Umiat, and pursuing a road to Nome. We need access to our resources. Alaskans—especially in our smaller communities, the heartbeat of Alaska, with truly so much potential—we need jobs for income and achievement. Responsible resource development—including drilling, mining, timber and tourism—means more jobs, instead of more government.

Now with the big line, every enterprise—every great thing worth doing—involves challenges. But we can be confident in this enterprise because it's founded on the fundamental interests of our state and nation. America needs energy: affordable, abundant and secure. With international conflicts, war, and environmental concerns, laws and markets seek safe, clean energy, and that's what we offer. The last president supported a gasline, and so does the new president. Because even the most promising renewable energy sources are years from general use, between then and now, we need a clean interim fuel to power our grid and heat our homes. Natural gas is ideal.

In Alaska, all roads lead—well, really we only have the one, North—but it leads to the North Slope, and to the central importance of our North American gasline. America's security, Alaska's revenue, Alaskan careers, affordable fuel, even our ability to finally diversify our economy—all these hinge on the success of this great undertaking. I assure you: The line will be built—gas will flow—Alaska will succeed.

Ironically, our people are blessed with owning the richest natural resources in the country; here we're getting ready to flow four-and-a-half billion cubic feet of gas every day in a huge line; yet we've been more vulnerable than other Americans to every rise and fall in energy prices. Even though we own the resources. 

The solution for our state is much the same as for the rest of our nation—only the source is ours and much closer to us, so delivery can come sooner. We're facilitating a smaller, in-state gasline with legislation we'll hand you next month. My goal for this in-state line is completion in five years. It will carry 460-million cubic feet of gas every day to energize Alaska.

Previously, we've relied on a diminishing gas supply from Cook Inlet, and expensive diesel, and a mix of government subsidies, and not enough conservation—but that is not sustainable. And it shouldn't take another spike in energy costs to stir us into action. Alaska will help achieve energy independence and security for our country, and we can lead with a long-needed energy plan for America. But let us begin with energy security for ourselves.

This includes meeting my goal of generating 50 percent of our electric power with renewable sources. That's an unprecedented policy across the U.S, but we're the state that can do it with our abundant renewables, and with Alaskan ingenuity.

In our energy plan, for the first time, Alaskans will see cooperation among our utilities. We'll introduce legislation creating the joint utility corporation to finally accomplish this. No more fractured efforts to generate power along the Railbelt via so many different utilities, headed in so many different directions. We will have coordinated power generation that will finally make sense for consumers.

Energy is key. Governor Hickel spoke of the undeniable tie-in between energy and poverty, energy and peace and life. He said, "Our answers begin with energy. Freedom depends on it, so does hope."

For goals of hope, opportunity, and self-sufficiency, government is not the answer, but government can help with energy challenges. In villages, our weatherization programs provide jobs and reduce the cost of living. We continue to support bulk fuel purchases, PCE, power plant upgrades and many projects that foster opportunities and self-sufficiency. We've got to row together as one crew—that's the only way to reach these goals.

Now, we need more oil in the pipeline, too. So we strictly enforce state laws and contracts with oil companies. We'll hold them accountable with those contracted commitments they signed, to develop our resources—as we are expected to keep our word to them. Our reformed oil production formula, ACES, helps them with strong incentives to keep capital re-invested, and it's working with new developments, as DNR just announced a banner year for new companies entering our competitive oil and gas arena.

Alaska, there will come a day when our success is not measured in barrels. The goal is multiplicity—an economy made strong by a wealth of petroleum, but no longer solely dependent on it. And again, the test of leadership is to be prepared. 

We need a plan. Business leaders, local officials, and other stakeholders, we all agree for our economic future, we need this. Like the saying, "Fail to plan? Then you plan to fail." To that end, I issued an administrative order this week calling for the state's first comprehensive economic strategy.

Like our unprecedented energy plan rolled out this month, the Alaska Legacy Plan is the first of its kind. It will determine practical strategies to implement today and for the next 50 years. In the past, organizations have studied our strengths and weaknesses. They offered generalized suggestions for change. That's good, we'll utilize that. We propose a strategic action plan for private sector and government to stimulate and diversify the economy. We'll need participation and common sense from those who make this economy run—namely, the small-business owners who do the hard work—they create jobs. That's where the best ideas are.

This will be the road map for activities and investments, to grow us strong, here in the Great Land of plenty. With our ideal, strategic position on the globe as the air-crossroads of the world; with our massive size, with stores of potential, with our spirit, with our people—together we will plot the course.

I have confidence in Alaskans, in their judgment and groundedness. Even more so after the journey I completed on November 4th. I learned more about fighting the good fight, facing long odds, the need to protect family—my own and our Alaska family—and putting Country First even when voters put you second. Not unlike Alaska's journey.

When I took my oath of office to serve as your Governor, remember, I swore to steadfastly and doggedly guard the interests of this great state like a grizzly with cubs, as a mother naturally guards her own. Alaska, as a statewide family, we've got to fight for each other, not against and not let external, sensationalized distractions draw us off course.

As an exciting year of unpredictable change begins, we, too, have our work cut out for us. And we're all in this together. Just like our musk ox, they circle up to protect their future when they are challenged. We've got to do the same. So now, united, protecting and progressing under the great North Star, let's get to work.

Thank you. God bless.

He'd better get used to this

Politico's Johnathan Martin and Carrie Budoff Brown report,

President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to the White House press corps Thursday night, but got agitated when he was faced with a substantive question.

Asked how he could reconcile a strict ban on lobbyists in his administration with a deputy defense secretary nominee who lobbied for Raytheon, Obama interrupted with a knowing smile on his face.

"Ahh, see," he said, "I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can't end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I'm going to get grilled every time I come down here."

Pressed further by the Politico reporter about his Pentagon nominee, William J. Lynn III, Obama turned more serious, putting his hand on the reporter's shoulder and staring him in the eye.

"Alright, come on" he said, with obvious irritation in his voice. "We will be having a press conference at which time you can feel free to [ask] questions. Right now, I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself to you guys—that's all I was trying to do."

Candidate Obama got away with treating the media like that; President Obama, though, is going to find that that sort of behavior isn't going to wear well.  If he doesn't want to make enemies of the media, he'd best get used to answering their questions.

HT:  The Weekly Standard

Good news on the tech front

I know a couple folks who've been playing around with the Windows 7 beta, and everyone seems to agree:  even as a beta, it mops the floor with Vista.  Win 7 appears to be to Vista as 98 was to 95—namely, a giant bug fix, fine-tune and cleanup; and it looks like Microsoft is doing a good job of that.  Perhaps the best news is that

Windows 7 also cuts down on annoying warnings and nag screens. Microsoft notifications have been consolidated in a single icon at the right of the taskbar, and you can now decide under what circumstances Windows will warn you before taking certain actions.

Unless, of course, it's this:

In my tests, even the beta version of Windows 7 was dramatically faster than Vista at such tasks as starting up the computer, waking it from sleep and launching programs. . . . Windows 7 is also likely to run well on much more modest hardware configurations than Vista needed.

That said, neither of these things is likely to draw the most attention; the big notices will be reserved for its big new feature:

The flashiest departure in Windows 7, and one that may eventually redefine how people use computers, is its multitouch screen navigation. Best known on Apple's iPhone, this system allows you to use your fingers to directly reposition, resize, and flip through objects on a screen, such as windows and photos. It is smart enough to distinguish between various gestures and combinations of fingers. I haven't been able to test this feature extensively yet, because it requires a new kind of touch-sensitive screen that my laptops lack.

For my part, I don't care about that (right now, at least); I'll just be happy to have an OS that doesn't silt up so fast, and isn't stubbornly determined to nag me to death.

The politics of personal destruction, intra-GOP edition

When a couple McCain campaign staffers went to war on Sarah Palin last fall, trying to make her the implausible scapegoat for their candidate's loss, one obvious motive was to shift the blame for the loss away from their own (dismal) performance.  Beyond that, there were rumors that the Romney camp was behind it in an effort to help Mitt Romney's chances to win the GOP's presidential nomination in 2012.  It quickly became clear, however, that Nicolle Wallace, a former CBS executive whom the McCain campaign made Gov. Palin's chief handler (and who, as such, was responsible for most of the decisions that hurt Gov. Palin), was the primary bad actor; at that point, the Romney theory fell by the wayside, because Wallace wasn't allied with the Romney camp.  She had been, however, an aide to George W. Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, which prompted the suggestion that the deep motive behind her attempt to smear Gov. Palin was in fact to clear the decks for Jeb Bush to run for President.

Now, we have an idea why.  Judging from her column yesterday, Wallace may be a Republican but she's no conservative; rather, she seems pretty clearly to be an Establishment Republican who is opposed to any sort of conservative resurgence within the GOP.  She worked for the Bushes, who are the First Family of the oldline GOP Establishment if anyone is, and then went to work for John McCain, who was (from the Establishment perspective) President Bush's logical successor despite the differences between the two men; but when Sen. McCain named an actual conservative as his running mate—and an appealing, charismatic, pathbreaking conservative at that—that obviously posed her a problem.  Erick Erickson of RedState writes about Wallace,

We don’t know why she behaved as she did other than to save her own skin at the expense of a decent women maligned by the press and handled incompetently by the McCain campaign.

I agree that we can't know for sure; but I do wonder, given what we do know, if at some level Wallace was sabotaging Gov. Palin.  I don't say that she was doing so consciously—but given that Gov. Palin clearly represented a threat to Wallace's own political views and the wing of the party with which she has identified herself, she may well have done so subconsciously.  At the very least, and particularly given the remarkably poor way in which she assisted the Governor, she clearly was not motivated to do her best work on Gov. Palin's behalf.  When one considers how she acted once she was free to say whatever she wanted about Gov. Palin, however, the possibility that her sabotage may have been at least semi-deliberate (an effort to play down the Governor and thus hurt her without hurting Sen. McCain's campaign) cannot be ruled out.

Whether Gov. Jeb Bush will in fact jump into the 2012 presidential race, I have no idea; but if he does, regardless of attempts to hatchet down Gov. Palin or anyone else, I can't imagine him winning the nomination.  Had things played out differently, I think he might have been a fine president—he was a good governor in Florida, and I certainly would have preferred him to his brother—but not now; the GOP needs to turn away from its establishment candidates and back to conservatism.  It also needs to return to its Reaganite roots in another way:  it needs to throw overboard the people who think it's appropriate to hatchet down fellow Republicans for political gain.  Like Nicolle Wallace.

Channeling Dubya, Part II

Even Jon Stewart has noticed:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

As John Hinderaker sums it up, "I think a great many liberals are hanging on to the idea that they can trust Obama because he is a liar and doesn't mean what he says. Time will tell whether that interpretation is correct or not. In the meantime, it doesn't speak very well of either Obama or his supporters on the Left."

The change we've been waiting for?

Yesterday, Barack Obama had some fine words for the people he's chosen to serve in his administration.  No surprise there; Barack Obama always has fine words.  I particularly appreciate this:

The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable. And the way to make government accountable is make it transparent so that the American people can know exactly what decisions are being made, how they're being made, and whether their interests are being well served.

The directives I am giving my administration today on how to interpret the Freedom of Information Act will do just that. For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city. The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed. That era is now over. Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known. . . .

Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.

Fine words, indeed, and a noble aim—but fine words only mean something if people take them seriously, and a noble aim is little but moonbeams if not pursued with determination.  So the question is, how are we seeing this realized?  

The answer, unfortunately, is that President Obama's senior appointees have already begun to betray their boss on this point.  Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary-designee, first offered the Senate dubious excuses for his failure to pay his taxes, then finally seems to have lied to them about it; Eric Holder, meanwhile, the nominee for Attorney General, has already been caught in a bald-faced lie.  Whatever your opinion about President Obama's ability to deliver the change he promised, I think we can all agree this isn't it.

LOLcats, Obama style

Because, as someone said, "cats live by the principle that it never hurts to ask for what you want."

Reality has entered the arena

Juan Williams has an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, "Judge Obama on Performance Alone," calling on the media to start treating President Obama fairly instead of favorably.  Williams writes,

It is neither overweening emotion nor partisanship to see King's moral universe bending toward justice in the act of the first non-white man taking the oath of the presidency. But now that this moment has arrived, there is a question: How shall we judge our new leader?

If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else—fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism—then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.

Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.

This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise. . . .

To allow criticism of Mr. Obama only behind closed doors does no honor to the dreams and prayers of generations past: that race be put aside, and all people be judged honestly, openly, and on the basis of their performance.

President Obama deserves no less.

Williams is right, and his point is a critically important one—even more important, perhaps, than he contends.  The sort of "affectionate if not fawning treatment from the American media" that Senator Obama received during the campaign was helpful to him as a candidate, because as a candidate he was insulated from the broader reality of the American situation.  He didn't have to put anything on the line to deal with the challenges this country faces, nor did he have to accept responsibility for anything that went wrong, because he wasn't in the arena where those challenges are actually faced—that fight belonged to President Bush, leaving Senator Obama free to critique from the stands without having to deal with it himself.  He had a different campaign to fight, one in which perception is what matters most, and the adulation of the media could affect that in meaningful ways to his benefit.

Now, however, the situation is very different; it is now President Obama's task to be "the man in the arena," and he is no longer free merely to comment, criticize, and suggest—he must act, and his actions will have direct and significant consequences.  As Jennifer Rubin writes,

The economy will either improve or it won’t. President Obama will either control and focus the multiple voices in his administration and prevent too many cooks from spoiling the soup (or deadlocking the administration) or he won’t. And he will either continue George W. Bush’s record of post-9-11 U.S. safety and post-surge progress, or he won’t. Those events can only be spun so much. But unemployment rates, Dow Jones averages, al Qaeda terrorists and even Congress don’t much care whether he is the embodiment of the mainstream media’s hopes and dreams.

In the end, what matters most is what the President does—and what results he achieves.

This is truth, and it means that from here on out, the media aren't really going to be able to do Barack Obama any favors; they can do a lot to destroy a president, as they did with George W. Bush, by skewing their reporting toward bad news and spinning things in negative ways, but they can't create good news that isn't there, and they can't keep bad news from getting out.  No matter how hard they try, "the MSM has to get around to reporting what everyone else knows to be the case sooner or later (as they did on Iraq)."  They can only delay that point—they cannot keep it from arriving.

That being the case, the one real effect they could have by continuing to fawn over Barack Obama is to foster and feed a feeling of overconfidence in the White House—which couldn't possibly be good for the president or his administration, and could quite possibly be fatal.  Far better for them to start asking the tough questions and digging out the hidden stories now, when there's much less on the line.  I don't expect them to attack President Obama the way they attacked President Bush—indeed, I'm glad they won't; what they did to our 43rd president was dishonorable and repulsive, and I would not care to see it repeated to anyone—but they need to get back to being what they claim to be, "a proud, adversarial press speaking truth about a powerful politician and offering impartial accounts of his actions."  As Juan Williams says, President Obama deserves no less.

As usual, score one for Mickey Kaus

who has this to say about the GOP's mood (it's the last item in the post):

Conservatives I've met in D.C. so far have been near-ebullient, not downcast or bitter. Why? a) They know how unhappy they'd be now if McCain had won; b) Obama has not fulfilled their worst fears, or even second-to-worst fears; c) now they can be an honest, straight-up opposition.

Oddly enough, b) might be the least important of the three.  a) and c) go together, really; the shots from Democrats that John McCain represented "a Bush third term" weren't fair on the whole, but there is one respect in which he would have been a continuation of the Bush administration:  it would have been four more years, for conservatives, of gritting teeth and biting tongues on a great many policies (more than with President Bush, I'm sure) so as not to undermine him on the few key ones on which we agree.  

Valued commenter and colleague Doug Hagler has argued repeatedly in his comments here that Republicans don't believe in free markets any more than the Democrats do, and that there is no party of small government; that isn't true on a grassroots level, or among the more junior leaders of the party, but it's been true on a national level for quite some time, and this is a lot of the reason.  The GOP hasn't put up an economic conservative as its presidential candidate since Reagan (though George H. W. Bush talked the talk long enough to get elected); and while the party won both houses of Congress on a conservative platform in 1994, power and its seductions bent the congressional GOP leadership away from that in time.  Conservatives in the party, in order to hold fast to conservative positions, would have had to go into opposition en masse to their own party—which probably would have looked severely counterproductive at the time, since it would undoubtedly have swung the federal government as a whole to the left.  In the long run, I'm not sure it would have been counterproductive at all, but that would have been a pretty long gamble to play . . . and might very likely have cost those conservatives their seats.  Would it have been worth it anyway to preserve a greater integrity to a conservative opposition?  Perhaps, but I doubt we'll ever be able to say for sure.

In any case, as Kaus notes, that particular problem has now been solved (in the most drastic fashion possible); the party has been purged to a considerable extent, and exiled to the outer darkness for its misdeeds.  That means it's a long road back, but as conservatives, we can be glad simply to be on the road back—it has at least turned around—and to have a new generation of leaders rising up, folks like Governors Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal, and Representatives Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, to guide us on the way.  It means it's the ideal time to begin to make the GOP a conservative party once again—and perhaps, this time, to learn from the mistakes of the last time, and keep it one.

The speechwriters'-eye view

Hugh Hewitt linked today to a blog that was started just this month by former White House speechwriters—specifically, the White House Writers Group, founded by former Reagan/Bush speechwriters, and the West Wing Writers, a group of former Clinton speechwriters—called Podium Pundits; their stated purpose is "to analyze and comment on major speeches, messaging strategy, and the business of communications."  This looks like it's going to be a fascinating blog, and I've added it to the blogroll.  Bonus points for posting the pictures of the year so far:

Channeling Dubya

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us,
and we will defeat you.

—President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009

Fine words, and very familiar-sounding, somehow.  Here's hoping he has the guts to stand to the mark behind them the way his immediate predecessor did.

(Great word, "predecessor"; literally, "the one who died before you."  Good metaphor for the presidency, really.)

Reasons to be proud

David Horowitz has an excellent piece on the inauguration up on FrontPage Magazine. I especially like his conclusion:

All over the country Americans have invested their hopes in Obama's ability to pull his country together to face its challenges. Among these Americans are millions—most likely tens of millions—who have never identified with their government before, who felt "outside" the system they regarded as run by elites, who ascribed its economic troubles to the greedy rich, who bought the Jackson-Sharpton canard that America was a racist society and they were locked out, who would have scorned the term "patriot" as a compromise with such evils, and who turned their backs on America's wars.

But today celebrating their new president are millions of Americans who never would have dreamed of celebrating their president before. Millions of Americans—visible in all their racial and ethnic variety at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday—have begun to feel a patriotic stirring because they see in this First Family a reflection of themselves.

The change is still symbolic and may not last. A lot depends on what President Obama will do, which is not a small question given how little is still known about this man and how little tested he remains. Some of this patriotism may be of the sunshine variety—in for a day or a season, when the costs are not great. Or more cynically: in to show that their hatred for America is really just another form of political “dissent.” Yet whatever the nature of these changes they cannot for now be discounted. Consider: When President Obama commits this nation to war against the Islamic terrorists, as he already has in Afghanistan, he will take millions of previously alienated and disaffected Americans with him, and they will support our troops in a way that most of his party has refused to support them until now. When another liberal, Bill Clinton went to war from the air, there was no anti-war movement in the streets or in his party’s ranks to oppose him. That is an encouraging fact for us in the dangerous world we confront.

If it seems unfair that Barack Obama should be the source of a new patriotism—albeit of untested mettle—life is unfair. If the Obama future is uncertain and fraught with unseen perils, conservatives can deal with those perils as they come. What matters today is that many Americans have begun to join their country's cause, and conservatives should celebrate that fact and encourage it. What matters now is that the American dream with its enormous power to inspire at home and abroad is back in business. What it means is that the race card has been played out and America can once again see itself—and be seen—for what it is: a land of incomparable opportunity, incomparable tolerance, and justice for all. Conservative values—individual responsibility, equal opportunity, racial and ethnic pluralism, and family—are now symbolically embedded in the American White House. As a result, a great dimension of American power has been restored. Will these values be supported, strengthened, put into practice? It is up to us to see that they are.

HT:  Paul Mirengoff

The future of newspapers

I think most folks who follow the news are aware that newspapers are in trouble, as stories multiply about the financial problems at papers like the Chicago Tribune, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and of course the Grey Lady, the New York Times.  Yesterday, Geoff Baker, who covers the Seattle Mariners as the beat writer for the Seattle Times, reflected on this situation on his blog.  I think he has some worthwhile things to say; I believe he's right that online content offers newspapers the opportunity to do far more than they can with their print editions. I particularly appreciate (and agree with) his comment that "the first step is for all reporters who still have jobs to start practising journalism to a far greater degree than they do."  He's more optimistic than I am about finding a financial model that will work to keep our newspapers afloat, but in the end, I think he's right that "this Darwinian exercise" will lead not to the extinction of newspapers but to their reinvigoration; we rely too much on the work they do for them to disappear.

The politics of gratitude

He was never the candidate I supported, or the president I would have chosen; I think he's gotten a raw deal and that he'll be treated much better by history than he was by the media, but there are many legitimate criticisms that will remain.  Some of those are policy disagreements, matters of liberals and conservatives having different ideas, but many of them aren't, especially as regards his management style and personnel judgment.

Nevertheless, I thank George W. Bush for his eight years of service as our president, just as I thank Barack Obama for now taking up that heavy burden—and just as I will thank him when the time comes for him to lay it down in turn.  I disagreed with much that President Bush did; I fully expect to disagree with far, far more that President Obama does; but just because they do not serve in the way I would prefer does not mean I'm not grateful for their willingness to serve.  Indeed, barring actual corruption, if you have to agree with everything a politician does in order to be grateful for their service, if you can only honor politicians who think the way you do and support the policies you want, then there's something wrong with you.  I mean that in complete sincerity.

This is now something conservatives need to bear in mind.  We've dealt with eight years of "He's not my president" and similarly dishonorable talk from liberals; for the sake of the Republic and the health of our own souls, we cannot afford to return ill for ill.  Just because we didn't get what we want doesn't mean we have the right to declare Barack Obama "not our president," or to belittle him, or spread lies about him, or treat him with contempt, or dismiss him as unworthy, or run down his character, or any of the other things we've watched liberals do to George W. Bush for the last two terms.  He is our president—Lord willing, the only one we're going to have for the next four years—and for the good of our country, we need to support him as best we can.  Not only would it be sick and wrong for conservatives to be as evil to him (or anywhere close) as his supporters were to President Bush, it's a luxury we can't afford.  We need to be better than that.  My prayer is that we will continue to be.

HT for the picture:  Benjamin P. Glaser