Gene Healy

Gene Healy: Three cheers for divided government

This election day, the punditocracy is closely watching the off-year contests, thinking they predict how the president's party will do in next year's congressional midterms. If so, things don't look so hot for President Obama. In New Jersey, Democratic governor Jon Corzine has done surprisingly well with his "make fun of the fat kid" reelection strategy, yet portly Republican Chris Christie retains a narrow advantage. In Virginia, the GOP's Bob McDonnell is comfortably ahead in a state that Obama won by over 200,000 votes, and a Sunday poll had Conservative Party upstart Doug Hoffman 16 points ahead of his Democratic opponent in New York's 23rd congressional district. If...

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Gene Healy: Read the bills? How about reading the Constitution?

You can live in this town for years and still occasionally find yourself gobsmacked by what counts as "normal" by Washington standards. Take the ongoing debate over whether it's fair for us to expect our elected representatives to read the laws they pass and expect us to follow. Recently, Sen. Thomas Carper, D-DE, and Rep. John Conyers, D-MI, scoffed at the idea that they should read the health care legislation working its way through Congress (hey, it's only a matter of life and death). That attitude has inspired the "Read to Vote" campaign--designed to get congressmen to pledge to "read every word of every bill before casting my vote." Read to Vote's efforts earned them a...

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Gene Healy: Talking with the Tea Partiers

When tens of thousands of Americans marched on Washington last month to protest President Obama's ongoing power grab, many liberals dismissed them as a horde of partisan, crypto-racist cranks. But a new study from a prominent Democratic polling firm shows that the Tea Partiers are neither racist nor particularly partisan. What's more, they genuinely support smaller government -- and they're not going away anytime soon. Last week, Democracy Corps, founded by Clinton vets James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, reported on a recent series of focus groups they held with GOP base voters and conservative-leaning independents. Hard-core conservatives in the groups expressed an "apocalyptic"...

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Gene Healy: Obama is becoming the omnipresident

"No-drama Obama"? The president's flight to Copenhagen last week to make a personal pitch for holding the 2016 Olympics in Chicago was an audacious move -- and a dramatic failure. "Second City Absorbs Its Latest Defeat," read the (rather snotty) headline in the New York Times. But shed no tears for Chicago. As a 2006 report from Europe's leading tourism trade association concluded, there's "little evidence of any benefit to tourism from hosting an Olympic Games, and considerable evidence of damage." With a projected half-billion-dollar deficit next year, the Second City is better off without the Games. We can't say the same for Obama's reputation after his in-person appeal failed...

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Gene Healy: The Imperial Presidency comes in green, too

Asked recently when the Senate might vote on cap-and-trade, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, demurred, muttering about "a busy, busy time the rest of this year." And yet last week, the Obama administration quietly moved forward with a plan to regulate power plants and other large stationary sources of greenhouse gases. The Obama team appears to believe it has the authority to implement comprehensive climate change regulation, Congress be damned. Worse still, under current constitutional law--which has little to do with the actual Constitution--they're probably right. In a democratic country, you'd think that before the executive branch could regulate CO2--a ubiquitous...

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Gene Healy: Right's czar mania is a distraction

"No more czars!" is the new tea party rallying cry, as conservatives across the country fear that President Obama has unleashed a legion of unaccountable bureaucratic overlords on the body politic. Having helped oust Van Jones, Obama's "green jobs" czar, Fox News' Sean Hannity swears that he won't rest until he's gotten "rid of every other one." But if he succeeds, will the country be appreciably freer, or the government noticeably smaller? No, it won't, because the conservatives' current bout of czar mania elevates symbolism over substance. All the focus on a scary moniker for certain executive officials misses the real problem: Unconstitutional delegation...

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Gene Healy: March on 9/12 shows the Right on the rise

In a new book, Sam Tanenhaus, the New York Times Book Review editor, proclaims the death of conservatism. Movement leaders' devotion to "radical" antigovernment ideology, Tanenhaus argues, has left them "trapped in the irrelevant causes of another day, deaf to the actual conversation unfolding across the land." Judging by the massive crowd on Saturday that descended on Washington for the 9/12 March, you'd have to be deaf not to recognize that small-government conservatism remains a vital part of the national conversation. If you've been fed a steady media diet of MSNBC over the last few months, though, you could be excused for fearing a Pennsylvania Avenue takeover by a rabble of...

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Gene Healy: Hey, Mr. President, leave those kids alone

At noon Eastern time today, President Obama will deliver a speech to America's schoolchildren on what, for most, is their first day of classes. Many of them won't be watching, however. Parents across the country are pressuring schools not to show the speech -- or even keeping their kids home. Is the president's speech part of a sinister plan to create a socialist Obama Youth movement? Hardly. The transcript, released yesterday, reveals a pretty standard homily to educational excellence, and there's no evidence it was ever supposed to be anything else. Even so, there's something grotesquely collectivist about the idea of the president addressing a captive audience of 50 million...

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Gene Healy: Afghanistan may be Obama's Vietnam

A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that a majority of voters think the Afghan War is no longer worth fighting. Who can blame them? Last week's combat deaths made 2009 the worst year yet for US casualties, and it's become increasingly difficult to figure out what fixing the failed Afghan state has to do with American national security. But while Americans are turning against the war, President Obama has staked his presidency on what he insists is a "war of necessity." It's not surprising that many see a parallel with Lyndon Johnson, another president of grand domestic ambitions who wrecked his presidency with an unwinnable war. But there's another aspect of the LBJ parallel...

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Gene Healy: Abolish the DHS

Does "time with my family" ever actually mean "time with my family" in Washington? Tom Ridge gave the standard resignation line when he stepped down as Secretary of Homeland Security shortly after the 2004 elections, but last week he revealed that there was much more to the story. In a forthcoming book, Ridge complains that the weekend before Election Day, Bush administration officials leaned on him to raise the color-coded threat level. Dismayed, Ridge refused the demand, and concluded he needed to resign. "I wondered," Ridge writes, "Is this about security or politics?" That's a question we ought to ask about DHS as a whole. Since its creation in 2003, the department has done little...

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Gene Healy: The era of Big Government initiatives is over

Who could have predicted that the summer of 2009 would be such a tough time to be a liberal? Seven months ago, President Obama took office with a 79 percent approval rating--the highest in three decades. The Kennedyesque cult of personality that surrounded the new president led many conservatives and libertarians to fear he'd be able to work his will in Congress, dramatically increasing the size of government. Yet cap-and-trade has dropped off this year's legislative agenda, and today Obama's signature initiative--national health care--remains stalled, growing more unpopular by the moment. A new Rasmussen poll has 54 percent of American voters preferring no health care reform to...

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Gene Healy: The Right can do better than Romney

In recent months, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has hit the speaking circuit like a man who is determined to be president and knows he needs to get an early start. Last week brought news that Romney had secured a major publisher for his forthcoming book, "No Apology: The Case for America's Greatness," in which Romney stands bravely against all those who insist that the United States is a mediocre country that's done more harm than good. Even before the recent Palin and Sanford flameouts, Romney looked like the Right's favorite son for 2012. He'd garnered National Review's 2008 endorsement as a "full-spectrum conservative," and won the Conservative Political...

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Gene Healy,: Deployed in the USA?

It's not hard to understand why President Barack Obama appalls supporters of traditional American liberties. In the first six months of his presidency, he's fought for radically expanded federal power, while asserting a quasi-royal prerogative to control the auto industry and pushing for a government takeover of the health care sector, as well as a cap-and-trade scheme that would regulate virtually every human activity that emits carbon dioxide. But if you're inclined to thank God for small favors, there's this at least: Obama hasn't yet proposed turning the U.S. military against American citizens. Last week, the New York Times revealed that the Bush administration seriously considered...

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Gene Healy: Staying sane when you are the President

It's hard not to worry about the president's grip on reality. I don't mean Barack Obama specifically--he seems fairly even-keeled as chief executives go. No, I mean all modern presidents. Each lives in an atmosphere that can make even the most well-adjusted personalities intoxicated with power. And given the massive power the modern president wields, we ought to give more thought than we do to how the Oval Office environment can warp character. One of our greatest--and sanest--chief executives, Calvin Coolidge, wrote in 1929 that it was hard for the president to "avoid the malady of self delusion," living as he does in an "artificial atmosphere of adulation and...

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Gene Healy sees the Millenials as the new statists

Next month, as the class of 2013 moves into the dorms, Wisconsin's Beloit College will release its annual "Mindset List." The list is that much-forwarded email that always makes you feel old--the one that includes horrifying factoids like, "for today's college freshmen, GPS navigation systems have always been available," and, "there has always been Pearl Jam." More horrifying still, soon they'll all be able to vote. The generation born from the late 1970s to the early '90s has been called "Gen Y," "GenNext," and "the Millennials." Its name is Legion. But whatever name they go by, and despite their image as web-savvy...

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Gene Healy on Sarah's Swan Song

t's a long way from 2012, but the field of GOP presidential contenders is already narrowing. First came South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's wrong turn on the Appalachian Trail, then Friday's announcement by Sarah Palin that she was resigning the Alaska governorship. Palin's future remains uncertain, but it's hard to see how her cryptic and poorly drafted resignation speech positions her for a presidential run. Nonetheless, her departure presents a good opportunity to reflect on the Right's affinity for presidential contenders who - how to put this? - don't exactly overwhelm you with their intellectual depth. It's one thing to reject liberal elitism. It's another thing to become so...

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Gene Healy on Obama's statist ambitions

"I am a firm believer in the power of the free market," President Obama told the Wall Street Journal recently. The "irony" surrounding his public image as a collectivist, the president insisted, was that "I actually would like to see a relatively light touch when it comes to the government." Either Obama is as confused about the definition of irony as pop singer Alanis "rain on your wedding day" Morrisette, or he was being disingenuous. Given the president's ambitious, state-bloating agenda and longtime disdain for free enterprise, the latter is more likely the case. Back in 2008, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton declared "we need...

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Staying in Afghanistan is the wrong strategy

There were echoes of Bush-style “deciderism” in President Obama’s peremptory announcement of an Afghanistan troop “surge” in February. Likewise, it was hard to miss the Iraq parallels in last week’s House vote for “emergency” funding to continue the nearly eight-year long Afghan war. Several skeptical Democrats switched their vote to “yes” at the last minute, citing loyalty to their party’s president. (The more things change….) “Quagmire” probably isn’t the right metaphor for arid Afghanistan, but once again, we seem stuck in a costly, dangerous foreign adventure. And Obama’s strategy...

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The "Militia Panic" of 2009

It didn't take long for liberals to politicize the recent murders of an abortion doctor and a Holocaust Museum guard. The day after the museum shooting, Markos Moulitsas of "Daily Kos" fame praised April's controversial Department of Homeland Security report on "Rightwing Extremism" (the one that urged law enforcement to watch out for potential terrorists lurking among pro-lifers and federalism enthusiasts). In Sunday's New York Times, Frank Rich deemed the DHS report "prescient," and warned that "homicide-saturated vituperation" from conservative talk radio might lead to more violence. The liberal overreaction to the crimes of two despicable...

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Sotomayor: A presidential power skeptic?

Most sane Americans are sick of identity politics. More's the pity, then, that race and gender will likely take center stage in the coming Supreme Court fight. If so, Sonia Sotomayor can hardly cry victim: She's fed the fire by repeatedly suggesting that women and minorities read the Constitution differently than white males.

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Voters are the cause of America's fiscal mess

There's plenty of blame to go around for the fiscal mess we're in. By ramming through a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, President George W. Bush launched the biggest expansion of entitlements in four decades. President Obama has added insult to injury by pushing through a $789 billion "stimulus" package, and attempting to, as the New Republic's John Judis puts it, transform "the American relationship of state to economy," with a budget that envisons a public sector more like France's or Sweden's. The result is that, in the midst of the Baby Boom generation's retirement, we're facing a 2009 deficit of nearly $1.8 trillion--larger than the entire federal...

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Time to downsize the imperial vice-presidency

A new book by Newsweek's Richard Wolffe reports that President Obama is dismayed by "his vice president's indiscipline." Who can blame him? At the height of the Swine Flu panic, our excitable veep fanned the fear on NBC's Today Show, squeaking that, "If one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft!" A month before, at a dinner with journalists, Biden apparently let slip the location of the secret bunker used by Dick Cheney after 9/11. Last week, the Christian Science Monitor offered this sardonic headline: "Biden Speaks at Wake Forest—does not disclose nuclear launch codes." “Between brain and mouth there is no...

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Dick Cheney is becoming Obama’s enabler

Dick Cheney’s “Shut Up and Listen” tour continued last week on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” There, the former veep reiterated his favorite theme: Obama is putting America at risk by “taking down a lot of those policies we put in place that kept the nation safe.” What in the world is Cheney talking about? Granted, Obama’s anti-terror policies are clouded by rhetorical “Hope” and euphemism, and the new administration is less given to chest-thumping than its predecessor. Otherwise, Obama’s approach to terrorism is virtually identical to Bush/Cheney’s. Whatever you think the right policy is regarding enemy...

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How Barack Obama killed an American pastime

A lot of folks are upset over comedienne Wanda Sykes's attack on Rush Limbaugh at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner. She called Rush a "traitor," and said "I hope his kidneys fail." Limbaugh aside, though, there were deeper problems with Sykes's routine: it was the work of a courtier comic: embarrassingly sycophantic and unfunny....

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Who is watching the Watchmen?

April was a cruel month indeed for new Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The weeks before the Swine Flu outbreak found her stumbling through reporters’ questions about a DHS threat assessment memo on “Rightwing Extremism.” That memo urged law enforcers nationwide to monitor the allegedly gathering danger from Rightist radicals, including pro-lifers, immigration opponents, and those who reject “federal authority in favor of state and local authority.” Was this a sinister conspiracy by an administration full of Chard-sipping arugula eaters determined to spy on Red-State patriots? That‘s quite unlikely: The memo was commissioned during...

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Obama’s 100-Day power grab

Unless you’ve been smart enough to avoid the news entirely for the last few weeks, you know that tomorrow marks President Obama’s first 100 days in office. But you may not know that the “100 days” phrase didn’t start with FDR, but with Napoleon. William Safire’s Political Dictionary tells us that it originally marked the period between the little dictator’s escape from Elba and rampage across Europe before his final defeat at Waterloo. So perhaps the question to ask about presidents’ first 100 days is, how much damage has our new Emperor done? In Obama’s case, the answer is, a lot. He’s made a running start toward...

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Of Course It Was Torture

On Thursday, the Obama administration released previously classified memos detailing interrogation techniques used against enemy prisoners. In the memos, Bush administration lawyers assured the CIA that waterboarding detainees and keeping them awake for a week or more was perfectly legal. Bush partisans insist that such methods aren’t torture, and that Obama has done grave harm to national security by revealing them. They're wrong on both counts. Conservative legal analyst David Rivkin, one of Bush’s most reliable defenders, insists that "any fair-minded observer" would conclude that the documents prove that "the Bush administration did not torture." But...

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Let's really cut the Pentagon's budget

Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called for slashing military spending. That's the impression you'd get from conservative wailing about Gates's speech, anyway. But what the administration has proposed is only a "cut" in Washington-speak: budget growth that’s slower than those feeding at the trough would like. Even so, such a "cut" is something new for the Department of Defense (DOD). Over the last decade, the Pentagon’s budget has grown by nearly 50 percent, even excluding the costs of our two ongoing wars. A defense budget that actually aimed at defense would make genuine, and deep, cuts in military spending. Call for seriously downsizing...

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Serve America lets Congress take another bow

Last week, the House passed the Serve America Act (SAA), which will triple the number of federally funded "volunteer" positions, create a "Clean Energy Corps" to weatherize homes, and make September 11th a “National Day of Service.” Like many federal assaults on the taxpayer, the SAA is a bipartisan offense: It passed by huge margins in both houses. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-MA, the primary sponsor, got a standing ovation after the vote was in, and co-sponsor Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, gushed that "the whole Kennedy family has been a service family." Hatch's statement neatly captures the fallacy behind the act - the notion that service to...

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Beware the cult of Obama

You’ve met them. They may be friends of yours, or family members. You may even be one of them (in which case you’ll hate this column). I’m referring to those who’ve heard the Call of Obama. Tucker Carlson compares it to a dog whistle: Inaudible to most, but irresistible to those who can hear it. Obama "walks into a room and you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere," George Clooney gushed to Charlie Rose. "I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make [Obama’s] pathway clear,” Halle Berry recently told the Philadelphia Daily News, “I’ll do whatever he says.” (Does Michelle know about this?) Hollywood...

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Change and hope on drug policy?

Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama Justice Department would end federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries. That's a welcome change from the Bush administration’s policy, which violated constitutional principle and common decency. Bush claimed to respect federalism, but his Justice Department repeatedly brought the heavy hand of the law down on desperately sick people who, with the approval of their state governments, used marijuana to ease their pain. Calling off the raids was the right thing to do, and—for a liberal president vulnerable to the charge of being "soft on drugs"—a politically courageous move (“the...

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In defense of distrust in government

President Barack Obama declared in his inaugural address that “our patchwork heritage is a strength” because people of all backgrounds and creeds had come together to make America great. But there was one group, Obama suggested, that wasn’t quite welcome in the American family: the “cynics,” those miserable killjoys who dare to “question the scale of [the federal government’s] ambitions.” There, Obama echoed his 2008 opponent, John McCain, who has repeatedly warned that there’s a specter haunting our country, in the form of a “pervasive public cynicism” toward government. “Cynicism” is a scare word,...

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Filibuster needed now more than ever

President Barack Obama has now made it clear that he’s no pragmatist, and "change" wasn't just a vacuous campaign theme. He has staggering ambitions and grand designs to transform the federal government's role in American life. A newly energized Republican minority seems bent on stopping him. You know what might come in handy in this fight? The filibuster, that time-honored legislative device that allows a minority of the Senate to hold up legislation unless 60 votes can be found to bring the bill to the floor. Last week, in fact, Senate Republicans used the filibuster to force Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, to table the pork-stuffed $410 billion omnibus spending...

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Conservatives need a humbler foreign policy

At last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), movement activists descended on Washington to lick their wounds and debate the way forward in the Age of Obama. The sentiment at CPAC was heavily behind what Politico has dubbed the “Retro Strategy,” or unified opposition to big-spending Democratic schemes. That’s good news for those of us who oppose bigger government. But there’s at least one aspect of conservative doctrine that desperately needs rethinking. That’s the Right’s embrace of the neoconservative approach to foreign affairs, which insists that America is weak, threatened on all sides, and can only be kept safe by an...

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The president talks too much

A week ago today, Barack Obama signed the largest spending bill in U.S. history. Yesterday he hosted a "fiscal responsibility" summit at the White House (a guilty conscience, perhaps?). Tonight, President Obama will deliver his first State of the Union address and issue a new round of lavish demands on the public purse. In recent weeks, the president has been anywhere and everywhere, with a campaign-style blitz of media appearances and town hall meetings. But, hard as it is to imagine in this era of the omnipresent president, there was a time when presidents weren't seen much and were heard even less. There might be a lesson there for Obama. Our founding fathers didn't want...

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