Recently in Bush Category

As always, Professor Thomas Sowell sees things clearly and tells it like it is simply and plainly. Would that our government and government-to-be were as clear-eyed and sensible and would have learned the lessons of history.

The auto bailout that the Bush Administration and the Democrats are discussing is for the unions, not for the companies. The sooner the companies take the necessary steps to reform themselves through Bankruptcy's Chapter XI, the better the chance they will emerge as companies ready for the competiton. It worked for the airlines, it can work for the auto companies.

In the meantime, Dr. Sowell suggests we look at the larger picture of life, of which the auto rescue plan is just one example of denying what needs to be done. Reality is still there when the fantasy fades.

Postponing Reality At Detroit's Big Three By THOMAS SOWELL | Posted Wednesday, December 17, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Some of us were raised to believe that reality is inescapable. But that just shows how far behind the times we are. Today, reality is optional. At the very least, it can be postponed.

Kids in school are not learning? Not a problem. Just promote them on to the next grade anyway. Call it "compassion," so as not to hurt their "self-esteem."

Can't meet college admissions standards after they graduate from high school? Denounce those standards as just arbitrary barriers to favor the privileged, and demand that exceptions be made.

Can't do math or science after they are in college? Denounce those courses for their rigidity and insensitivity, and create softer courses that the students can pass to get their degrees.

Once they are out in the real world, people with diplomas and degrees — but with no real education — can hit a wall. But by then the day of reckoning has been postponed for 15 or more years. Of course, the reckoning itself can last the rest of their lives.

The current bailout extravaganza is applying the postponement of reality democratically — to the rich as well as the poor, to the irresponsible as well as to the responsible, to the inefficient as well as to the efficient. It is a triumph of the non-judgmental philosophy that we have heard so much about in high-toned circles.

We are told that the collapse of the Big Three automakers in Detroit would have repercussions across the country, causing mass layoffs among firms that supply the automobile makers with parts, and shutting down automobile dealerships from coast to coast.

A renowned economist of the past, J.A. Schumpeter, used to refer to progress under capitalism as "creative destruction" — the replacement of businesses that have outlived their usefulness with businesses that carry technological and organizational creativity forward, raising standards of living in the process.

Indeed, this is very much like what happened a hundred years ago, when that new technological wonder, the automobile, wreaked havoc on all the forms of transportation built up around horses.

For thousands of years, horses had been the way to go, whether in buggies or royal coaches, whether pulling trolleys in the cities or plows on the farms. People had bet their futures on something with a track record of reliable success going back many centuries.

Were all these people to be left high and dry? What about all the other people who supplied the things used with horses — oats, saddles, horseshoes and buggies? Wouldn't they all go falling like dominoes when horses were replaced by cars?

Unfortunately for all the good people who had in good faith gone into all the various lines of work revolving around horses, there was no compassionate government to step in with a bailout or a stimulus package. They had to face reality, right then and right there, without even a postponement.

Who would have thought that those who displaced them would find themselves in a similar situation 100 years later?

Actually the automobile industry is not nearly in as bad a situation now as the horse-based industries were then. There is no replacement for the automobile anywhere on the horizon. Nor has the public decided to do without cars indefinitely.

While Detroit's Big Three are laying off thousands of workers, Toyota is hiring thousands of workers right here in America, where a substantial share of all our Toyotas are manufactured.

Will this save Detroit or Michigan? No.

Detroit and Michigan have followed classic liberal policies of treating businesses as prey, rather than as assets. They have helped kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. So have the unions. So have managements that have gone along to get along.

Toyota, Honda and other foreign automakers are not heading for Detroit, even though there are lots of experienced automobile workers there. They are avoiding the rust belts and the policies that have made those places rust belts.

A bailout of Detroit's Big Three would be only the latest in the postponements of reality. As for automobile dealers, they can probably sell Toyotas just as easily as they sold Chevys. And Toyotas will require just as many tires per car, as well as other parts from automobile parts suppliers.

UPDATE: No reality. President Bush punted to the union-supporting Obama administration and the Democratic Congress, who will use taxpayer money to save the unions, not GM and Chrysler. Painful changes are needed and Chapter XI bankruptcy is the obvious ways to accomplish them. Unaffordable contracts are dragging the car companies down: Think of this: 90,000 build cars for the Big Three, but the Big Three are paying the health care and pension costs for one million retirees. Doesn't work.

At least one financial expert Andy Kessler thinks that the Bush Administration financial system rescue plan developed by Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, working together with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, is brilliant and will in the long run prove immensely profitable for American taxpayers, That's not to say there will not be a lot of heartache and suffering for people who bet too much on housing prices rising to the sky. There are many details to be worked out, but the outlines of the Paulson plan appear to have been adopted by Congress, so this expert's view might provide some comfort at this time of gloom.

Paul Mirengoff, one of the three brilliant lawyers who write the Power Line blog has just gone through Bob Woodwood's most recent exposé of what really happened inside the Bush White House. It's so good we hope they won't mind that we are copying that entry in full:

Being right should count for something

The Washington Post is running a series of articles adapted from Bob Woodward's book "The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008." The articles purport to provide an inside account of the dissension over Iraq war policy and especially the surge.

The articles are well worth reading but they have an odd quality. The point of view that Woodward's narrative conveys is that a cowboy president, at the urging of a cowboy retired general (Jack Keane), ignored or gave short shrift to the sober warnings of top military professionals that the surge wouldn't work and would weaken the military. Bush did, of course, reject the advice of top military professionals, but events have proven that this advice was poor. And we have long known that the approach many of them advocated was failing on the ground. Yet the way Woodward writes the articles provides little sense of this. The reader almost wants to scream at Bush, "don't do it," despite the fact that "it" has been hugely successful.

The tendency among many conservatives is to criticize Bush for waiting so long to reverse course in Iraq and to implement the winning strategy. But if Woodward's account is true, I think Bush deserves considerable credit for getting it right at all, given the terrible advice he received from his top military professionals.

Even historians not favorably disposed to Bush may have to conclude that he was more sinned against than sinning, especially when it came to Iraq. Prior to the war, he was plagued by an intelligence agency that was largely clueless about the situation in Iraq. Once the war started, he was plagued by military leaders who seemed largely clueless about how to win there and, in Woodward's account, may not have been sufficiently committed to winning. Yet Bush was able nonetheless to come up with the winning strategy.

Historians should also be impressed by this statement by President Bush to Retired Gen. Keane, that Bush told Keane to deliver to Gen. Petraeus at a time when Petraeus was struggling against superiors who did not support what he was trying to do:

I respect the chain of command. I know that the Joint Chiefs and the Pentagon have some concerns. One is about the Army and Marine Corps and the impact of the war on them. And the second is about other contingencies and the lack of strategic response to those contingencies.
I want Dave to know that I want him to win. That's the mission. He will have as much force as he needs for as long as he needs it.

When he feels he wants to make further reductions, he should only make those reductions based on the conditions in Iraq that he believes justify those reductions. These two concerns that we are discussing back here in Washington -- about contingency operations and the needs of the Army and the Marine Corps -- they are not your concerns. They are my concerns.

I do not want to change the strategy until the strategy has succeeded. I waited over three years for a successful strategy. And I'm not giving up on it prematurely. I am not reducing further unless you are convinced that we should reduce further.

This is Lincoln (the resolve) and Grant (the clarity) rolled into one. The author [ah, that's Bush, not Woodward], the recipient, and the intermediary deserve the nation's gratitude.