A Shameful Congress

Well-known is the predicament in which President Obama finds himself: a sluggish economic recovery, an agonizing inability to proclaim a plan for the long-term well-being of America, and starkly divided opinion about his leadership creep upon his every move.  Congress also faces a struggle of vast proportions, though this monster is one borne out of decades of virulent ethical failures on the part of our very own representatives.  Congress, it seems, is not quite the vaunted institution which once saw honorable statesmen opine about the founders and the dangers of encroaching government.  Congressional officials—necessarily from both the Democratic and Republican parties—have amassed despicable records of intransigence to a common course of ethics vital to the preservation of a healthy democracy.

No longer are Congressmen servants of the public, but leeches in the public sphere.  Most horrifying is that this game is only in its initial stage, and will accelerate into something surely more dangerous if voters fail to heed the warning signs.

The rampant criticism directed at Mitt Romney over the past few weeks for his wealth is most certainly misplaced.  Yes, he is a millionaire many times over.  And yes, he pays his taxes; he also follows the law. What voters need to direct their attention toward is the base behavior of our representatives—the ones which have become self-satisfied while sidestepping the very trust which voters placed in them.

For example, we have the esteemed doyenne of the Democratic Party, Nanci Pelosi (D-CA), who seems to have forgotten or faithfully ignored why the people elected her in the first place.  Following the revelation to the public that Pelosi had abused the services of the military for her personal purpose; she shamelessly replaced first class flights with United States Air Force aircraft stocked with chocolate-covered strawberries especially for her birthday for her and her family.  Pelosi should surely have stopped, but alas, as an esteemed representative, she reserved the right to continue this embarrassing act, logging 43 flights on Air Force aircraft after being outed for her initial misuse of military resources.

The Republican party too has its share of corrupt sleazeballs. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) has been an utter embarrassment to the GOP.  Peter Schweizer, in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out, writes about Bachus’s service as the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.  Bachus traded short-term stock options in 2008 after being privy to a private briefing exclusively for congressional leaders.  Led by Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the meeting revolved around the impending meltdown of the global economy.

Following this meeting, it appears, Bachus used his newly gained information to further his self-interest, making eerily suspicious trades and seemingly setting his constituents’ interests aside.

Judicial Watch had this to say Bachus’s actions:

“Congressman Bachus’s aggressive trading practices, in which he was able to benefit by betting on falling stock prices, reportedly earned him substantial profits from some of the 40 trades placed during the months of July through November 2008, many of the trades occurring after the September meeting.”

This is not a man suited for public office. While Americans were suffering from the financial crisis, Bachus profited from this disaster, using information unavailable to most of America.

Both Pelosi and Bachus’s actions are but two of countless contemptible shows put on by our representatives. These ethical blunts reek of utter contempt for upholding the honor that once existed with a public office.

Conservatism proscribes that we—humans, yes endowed with the gift of life, but also afflicted by the opportunity to err—practice prudence, but that statesmen, especially, adhere to ethical principles representative of the highest order. Conservatism also asks of us the courage to demand restraints upon power and human passions.

We must remember these teachings as we move toward the 2012 elections. Our job is not merely to elect conservatives or Republicans to office—Congressional or presidential.  It is to elect those representatives who will best represent our beliefs but also adhere to a code of ethical behavior demanded by us.  Arguably as important is our responsibility to dethrone the corrupt leeches from both parties. That is something conservatism—a philosophy of measured behavior—first demands of us.

Raj Kannappan :: Cornell University :: Ithaca, New York :: @RajKannappan

The Allure of Executive Power

By Raj Kannappan, TheCollegeConservative.com

January 13, 2012

 

Promises upon promises abound in elections. Senator Obama proved himself a masterful coaxer in 2008, feasting on the pining of an electorate disillusioned with the American political system. He was the unifier, the inspirational personage representing the solution to a failed decade marked by a rowdy Texan in the White House who squandered America’s capital in foreign lands.

The next four years, and surely the next eight, were to be ones marked by a robust economic recovery, a dramatic decline in poverty, and, of course, resurgence of confidence in America’s position in the world.

None of these have materialized.  In fact, in each case, the opposite predicament has arisen, pointing to an increasingly appropriate referendum of what Obama so aptly called a one-term proposition at the inception of his presidency.

Throughout the course of his first term, Obama surely learned; whether or not that knowledge satisfies or angers his staunchly liberal base and his detractors is another question. As his presidency has progressed, however, the issue on which he has shifted course almost entirely from his campaign rhetoric is that of counter-terrorism.

Pre-January 20, 2009, there were grand vows of closing Guantanamo Bay and, thus, dramatically bettering relations with the Muslim world.  Added in Obama’s cornucopia were endless assurances to improve the perception of America throughout the world, as if this were the number one job of the commander-in-chief. Seeing that Bush had but jilted any concern for this in exchange for an utterly disastrous foreign policy and national security strategy—at least, according to Obama’s tale of what would, under him, be a foreign policy dictated by “a new spirit, not of bluster and bombast, but of quiet confidence and sober intelligence, a spirit of care and renewed competence.” Obama appeared to plant the seeds for a more internationalist agenda. What happened?

Woe to the peaceniks and the gullible progressives who had reveled in dreams of a dramatic shift from Manichean Bush to judicious Obama.

Today, veteran Democrats heed little their previously boisterous calls for a minimization of foreign policy aggression. They express at best a timid concern for the ironic reality that a president from their own party—one that has over the years claimed to have monopolized representation of the downtrodden and the true ideals of democracy—is implementing the most expansive targeted killing campaign in the history of the nation. Drone strikes have increased from one country—Pakistan, under big, bad George—to five more: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen—under Obama’s Camelot.  In number, the attacks have grown significantly, from 42 under Bush to nearly 250—just in Pakistan—under Obama.

Secrecy not unlike that for which the Bush White House was criticized enshrouds the current administration’s drone campaign against al-Qaeda and its affiliate brethren. The president can order the killing of selected individuals—U.S. citizens included—anywhere in the world without checks on his executive authority or oversight of any nature. Washington is well aware of this filthy secret, yet but a few souls who once indulged the president’s dictations of legal doctrine now air their critiques of Obama’s decision to cast aside his vows to uphold the law of the land and to respect the sovereignty of those nations ravaged by the decisions of one previous American leader who had supposedly embarrassed America with his machismo.

What was to be the most transparent administration in the history of the country—presumably to be defined by Obama’s own words, “My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government”—has resisted disclosing any details about the structure of the drone program or even the names of those who have been assassinated.  Colin Powell isolated within the Bush White House for his dissent on the Iraq War?  Well, so be the fortunes of the director of national intelligence Dennis Blair, fired promptly by Obama last year following his efforts to raise debate within the White House on the drone program.

Unmanned successes abroad? Undoubtedly. Gone are the days of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki. And relegated to oblivion are hundreds of al-Qaeda operatives and affiliates throughout the Greater Middle East.

But well and alive are claims of a nuanced counter-terrorism strategy driven by the needs of the day. Apparently, it’s not that Obama, former University of Chicago constitutional law professor extraordinaire, fails to stand for human rights or the rule of law. It’s just that he finds sacrificing some of these conveniently frivolous fixtures necessary to perform his most important task: protecting the country and her allies. Surely, a complex conclusion this idea does not provide.

Simply put, in Obama’s own interpretation, he embarked on an expansion of the drone campaign to protect the country and her allies. He did what he thought was right and strategically effective. After all, increasingly advanced technology in the form of unmanned aerial vehicles prevents the loss of American blood while efficiently taking out scores of American enemies.

Despite the quantifiable successes of the drone campaign, what should puzzle every witness is the brazen nature of Obama’s eager criticism of Bush’s handling of counter-terrorism. The president and his proponents continue to claim that Bush-era policies like waterboarding and Guantanamo undermined our security, violated fundamental American legal doctrine, and crossed a historic line of morality. But the same criticisms can just as easily be cast upon Obama’s counter-terrorism strategy. Admittedly, drones are one aspect of the administration’s strategy, but they do, after all, kill, not torture.

On his vision to “lead in the observance of human rights, and the rule of law, and civil rights and due process,” Obama has, measured but by his very own standards, sacrificed an abundance of credibility. His expansion of the drone campaign, in cooperation with his signing of the National Defense Authorization Act, which extends the Guantanamo transfer restrictions and codifies the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists without trial; and his apparent acceptance of signing statements to modify the meaning of duly enacted laws, for which he lambasted Bush, have reinforced a well-established lesson: For Obama, the constitution is sacrosanct, except when he feels it’s not. To move from a position of claiming that he would not “use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around Congress” to using them 20 times already is telling.

A world of difference—no, change—executive power certainly does make.

Obama the Narcissist

With 2012 comes a new set of challenges for the conservative base of the Republican Party.  How we will deal with them, no one knows. What is clear is that President Obama has done his part in providing quite an effective and scathing blueprint for the GOP to employ against him during the campaign.

GOP officials in Washington are now discretely putting the finishing touches on “the book,” a 500-page colorful collection of Obama quotes and video highlights that will compose the heart and soul of the party’s strategy against him.  Not only does this blueprint provide eager fodder for well-placed attack ads, but it also details the statistics—bleeding unemployment, poverty, and confidence in government forming a powerful core—which back up the GOP’s claim that the president has but broken his myriad grandiose promises.

Most importantly, a significant majority of the quotes and videos in this blueprint include the president’s own words, helping the GOP avoid alienating voters who sympathize with the president personally. Below are a handful of cases which will serve well to illustrate the fatal flaw of the president.

It appears that the president often sees himself as a monumental historical figure. He knows not when to cease his needlessly narcissistic comparisons to the towering figures of America’s past.

In a recent “60 Minutes” interview, the president educated Steve Kroft, pontificating, “The issue here is not going be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president—with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhJNJgjpuWk]

What should puzzle every voter is why Kroft had the compunction to avoid a follow-up to this utterly inexplicable claim. In his own words, the president believes himself to be the fourth best president in history—that too, only maybe. Gleaning from his use of “maybe,” it would also be derelict to not mention that he actually feels he should be higher up on the list. And this heap of self-adulation merits not one question of journalistic curiosity from a much-acclaimed investigative reporter?

More telling was the “60 Minutes” editors’ excluding this portion of the interview from the show’s Dec. 11 television broadcast. Even they seemingly thought the president’s claim a tad too laughable.

Political elites and activists, saving fervent supporters, have come around to the conclusion that the president does, in fact, have an outsized view of himself and his accomplishments. He does, by all means, see himself as the saving grace for a country mired in a quagmire of draining unemployment, debt, and lack of confidence in public officials. Depicted quite effectively, once again, by his own words was the savior himself in January 2010, this time in response to Rep. Marion Berry’s asking the White House to avoid forcing him and other Blue Dogs to support bills that would be opposed by voters back home: “Well, the big difference here and in ‘94 was you’ve got me. We’re going to see how much difference that makes now.”

You see, the problem in the past wasn’t a political impasse created out of vastly differing views on what path to put the country on or out of problems that have arisen from a state of economic withering. The problem was the presidents. This time, the country has Barack Obama. This time, his presence in the White House will clear the way for the people to rise up in unison and forge a path forward.

What the president still fails to understand after three years in his palace is that this type of behavior is of the exact nature that Americans find off-putting. They desire not a self-effusive vessel of grandeur to solve their problems, but rather, a leader who will work alongside them when necessary to overcome the issues of the day. They neither need nor want an educator, a professorial cauldron of never-ending narcissism.

Save for Newt Gingrich—who now appears to be losing some momentum—the Republican presidential candidates speak about themselves in measured tones, for the most part avoiding the grandiose claims of President Obama. They recognize the fatal flaw of the president and have done well to maintain a level of composure and self-awareness representative of the highest office in the land. It is this ability to communicate with voters based on the merits of respect that will help the Republican candidate paint a stark contrast to the self-proclaimed, eager-to-promise Lebron James in the White House.

Raj Kannappan // Cornell University // @RajKannappan

The Potemkin President // Raj Kannappan // 11.30.2011

In 2007, transcending the debauched world of politics emanated his hope and promise: “I don’t want to spend the next year or the next four years refighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don’t want to pit red America against blue America. I want to be the President of the United States of America.” What has transpired since then? Senator Obama eventually came face to face with the realities of the highest office in the land; hopeless and changeless circumstances grounded his Messianic rise.

In a 2009 interview with Steve Kroft on CBS’s 60 Minutes, President Obama unveiled his true view on unity, declaring without compunction, “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.” Right, he just ran to vilify a segment of the electorate working, yes, to take home lofty paychecks, but concurrently, to facilitate transactions, grant credits, and even support emerging economies, thereby oiling the wheels of commerce. The President added later on that the same banks that had been bailed out by taxpayers were “fighting tooth and nail with their lobbyists… up on Capitol Hill, fighting against financial regulatory control.” Apparently, he’d forgotten that these same banks had bought him out too.

Obama so desperately wants to appear as though he’s fighting a battle to end all battles against the wealthy on behalf of the disenfranchised—the 99%. Yet, what many liberals and now, particularly, those who occupy Wall Street—most of whom presumably voted for Obama and will vote for him the second time around, despite their claims otherwise—fail to admit is that Obama has reaped the largesse of “fat cat” bankers more than any Republican in recent history.  They fail to perceive that the Democratic Party has as much to do with fostering a corporate-government collusion as the GOP. Obama took the White House not only through the small contributions of millions of average Americans, as his campaign touts incessantly, but also through hefty donations from the upper crust of society.

In fact, Obama has amassed more money from Wall Street than any politician from either party in the last 20 years. During his 2008 presidential bid, he received approximately 20% of his total campaign donation from Wall Street. Interestingly enough, these same reprobate financiers contributed a greater total to Obama’s campaign than they did to Senator John McCain’s.

More specifically, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, in the last presidential election Obama reined in wads of cash from multiple bulge bracket firms. In total, including contributions from employees and the respective bank’s Political Action Committee, Obama collected $1,013,091 from Goldman Sachs, $808,799 from JPMorgan Chase & Co., and $736,771 from Citigroup.  Furthermore, he procured $532,674 from UBS and $512,232 from Morgan Stanley.  An examination of campaign finance records also reveals that Obama picked up a modest sum of $421,242 from Bank of America, outdoing the bank’s previous record contribution of $329,761 to President George W. Bush in 2004.

It would also surprise ardent populist supporters of the Democratic Party who claim to be waging a Manichean battle valiantly for the cause of the unprivileged that according to figures dating to 1990, Goldman Sachs—the epitome of arrogance and greed against which liberals continue to rail—has consistently contributed more money to Democratic rather than Republican candidates for federal office. In 2008, for example, three out of every four dollars contributed by Goldman Sachs bolstered Democratic coffers.

Unsurprisingly, President Obama—the patriarch of the party that seemingly claims to have monopolized representation of the impoverished—has failed to reconcile his supposed moral adherence to defending the poor at all costs with his sycophancy to “fat cat” bankers.

Perhaps the statement most indicative of Obama’s self-contradictory behavior was one from an anonymous Wall Street executive who wished to avoid blowback from the administration. Invited to, but ultimately rejecting the offer to, an exclusive meeting with Obama in the White House’s Blue Room a few weeks before the President announced his reelection bid in April, the executive remarked that it was quite ironic that the man who had railed against bankers in blanket fashion would have the nerve to invite him and his colleagues to a fundraising dinner at Daniel, the Upper East Side restaurant whose $185 six course tasting menu and opulent interior reject any notion of restraint or genuine recognition of the plight of the country’s poor.

After all the slanderous statements he has plastered to the faces of bankers and corporate employees in general over the past three years, the least the President can do is set the record straight. He needs to reveal to the American people the truth about Wall Street and give them the post-partisan message that he promised when he was running to govern the United States of America. He needs to tell them that corporate businesspeople are, in fact, a vital and necessary source of the country’s economic prosperity, and not merely parasites on society. But, alas, he won’t ever commit this sinful deed, as it would effectively blunt the momentum of OWS and siphon away precious votes.

Maligning Wall Street employees amidst an abhorrently stagnant economy is neither presidential nor post-partisan. President Obama isn’t merely politicking, he’s governing disingenuously. The Obama 2012 campaign has begun to milk the rich, already raising $15.6 million from Wall Street donors. However, in a not-so-transparent fashion, the campaign hasn’t disclosed the identities of its wealthy bundlers. If your curiosity so piques you to, say, uncover that Jon Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs CEO-turned New Jersey Governor-turned disgraced executive of now bankrupt MF Global Holdings, raised over $500,000 for Obama or that Robert Wolf, president of UBS Investment Bank, also raised that much for our very own Robin Hood in disguise, you’ll have to dig through an endless stream of federal election records.

It seems that President Obama has cast aside his own calls for unity and moral rectitude in exchange for financial and political expediency. It’s only a matter of time before the American electorate realizes that they’re being brazenly bamboozled.

Raj Kannappan // Cornell University // @RajKannappan