The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
November 12, 2012
The
most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is that
Americans voted for the status quo for the incumbent President and for a
divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence,
economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility. And fewer people
voted. As I write, with almost all the votes counted, President Obama
has won fewer votes than John McCain won in 2008, and more than ten
million off his own 2008 total.
But
as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile
explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the
chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of
Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he
ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have
chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a
slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle.
Romney lost because he didnt get enough votes to win.
That
might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney lost
because the conservative virtues the traditional American virtues of
liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and aspirations
to moral greatness no longer inspire or animate a majority of the
electorate. The notion of the Reagan Democrat is one cliché that should
be permanently retired. Ronald Reagan himself could not win an election
in todays America.
The
simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete
against free stuff. Every businessman knows this; that is why the loss
leader or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obamas America
is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the
47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote,
and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who courtesy of Obama
receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both
disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to work off
the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote;
so too those who anticipate free health care, who expect the government
to pay their mortgages, who look for the government to give them jobs.
The lure of free stuff is irresistible.
Imagine
two restaurants side by side. One sells its customers fine cuisine at a
reasonable price, and the other offers a free buffet, all-you-can-eat
as long as supplies last. Few including me could resist the attraction
of the free food. Now imagine that the second restaurant stays in
business because the first restaurant is forced to provide it with the
food for the free buffet, and we have the current economy, until, at
least, the first restaurant decides to go out of business. (Then, the
government takes over the provision of free food to its patrons.
The
defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation (by the amoral
Obama team) of the secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged
the difficulty of winning an election in which 47% of the people start
off against him because they pay no taxes and just receive money free
stuff from the government. Almost half of the population has no skin in
the game they dont care about high taxes, promoting business, or
creating jobs, nor do they care that the money for their free stuff is
being borrowed from their children and from the Chinese. They just want
the free stuff that comes their way at someone elses expense. In the
end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican,
and does not bode well for the future. It is impossible to imagine a
conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do
vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who
will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free
stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.
That
engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion
that the electorate is dumb ignorant, and uninformed. Indeed, it does
not pay to be an informed voter, because most other voters the clear
majority are unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw
populism. That is the indelicate way of saying that too many people vote
with their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama did not have
to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term record.
He needed only to portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who
throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away
their cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for
the rich. Obama could get away with saying that Romney wants the rich to
play by a different set of rules without ever defining what those
different rules were; with saying that the rich should pay their fair
share without ever defining what a fair share is; with saying that
Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to fend for themselves without
even acknowledging that all these government programs are going
bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit
spending. Obama could get away with it because he knew he was talking to
dunces waving signs and squealing at any sight of him.
During
his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson:
Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person! Stevenson called
back: Thats not enough, madam, we need a majority! Truer words were
never spoken.
Similarly,
Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory
would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their
abortions and birth control would be taken away. He could appeal to
Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to Mexico
(even if they came from Cuba or Honduras), and unabashedly state that
he will not enforce the current immigration laws. He could espouse the
furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and
unions in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in
exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in
exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions
provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone. He could do and
say all these things because he knew his voters were dolts.
One
might reasonably object that not every Obama supporter could be
unintelligent. But they must then rationally explain how the Obama
agenda can be paid for, aside from racking up multi-trillion dollar
deficits. Taxing the rich does not yield even 10% of what is required so
what is the answer, i.e., an intelligent answer?
Obama
also knows that the electorate has changed that whites will soon be a
minority in America (theyre already a minority in California) and that
the new immigrants to the US are primarily from the Third World and do
not share the traditional American values that attracted immigrants in
the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a different world, and a different
America. Obama is part of that different America, knows it, and knows
how to tap into it. That is why he won.
Obama
also proved again that negative advertising works, invective sells, and
harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged in such
diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his negative ads
were simple facts, never personal abuse facts about high unemployment,
lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a
lack of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because
he did not embrace the devils bargain of making unsustainable promises,
and by talking as the adult and not the adolescent. Obama has spent the
last six years campaigning; even his governance has been focused on
payoffs to his favored interest groups. The permanent campaign also won
again, to the detriment of American life.
It
turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan people of
substance, depth and ideas to compete with the shallow populism and
platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy of
class warfare never reaching out to Americans as such but to individual
groups, and cobbling together a winning majority from these minority
groups. Conservative ideas failed to take root and states that seemed
winnable, and amenable to traditional American values, have simply
disappeared from the map. If an Obama could not be defeated with his
record and his vision of America, in which free stuff seduces voters it
is hard to envision any change in the future. The road to Hillary
Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy those very economies
that are collapsing today in Europe is paved.
A
second cliché that should be retired is that America is a center-right
country. It clearly is not. It is a divided country with peculiar voting
patterns, and an appetite for free stuff. Studies will invariably show
that Republicans in Congress received more total votes than Democrats in
Congress, but that means little. The House of Representatives is not
truly representative of the country. That people would vote for a
Republican Congressmen or Senator and then Obama for President would
tend to reinforce point two above: the empty-headedness of the
electorate. Americans revile Congress but love their individual
Congressmen. Go figure.
The
mass medias complicity in Obamas re-election cannot be denied. One
example suffices. In 2004, CBS News forged a letter in order to imply
that President Bush did not fulfill his Air National Guard service
during the Vietnam War, all to impugn Bush and impair his re-election
prospects. In 2012, President Obama insisted famously during the second
debate that he had stated all along that the Arab attack on the US
Consulate in Benghazi was terror (a lie that Romney fumbled and failed
to exploit). Yet, CBS News sat on a tape of an interview with Obama in
which Obama specifically avoided and rejected the claim of terrorism on
the day after the attack clinging to the canard about the video. (This
snippet of a 60 Minutes interview was not revealed - until two days
ago!) In effect, CBS News fabricated evidence in order to harm a
Republican president, and suppressed evidence in order to help a
Democratic president. Simply shameful, as was the medias disregard of
any scandal or story that could have jeopardized the Obama re-election.
One
of the more irritating aspects of this campaign was its limited focus,
odd in light of the billions of dollars spent. Only a few states were
contested, a strategy that Romney adopted, and that clearly failed. The
Democrat begins any race with a substantial advantage. The liberal
states like the bankrupt California and Illinois and other states with
large concentrations of minority voters as well as an extensive welfare
apparatus, like New York, New Jersey and others give any Democratic
candidate an almost insurmountable edge in electoral votes. In New
Jersey, for example, it literally does not pay for a conservative to
vote. It is not worth the fuel expended driving to the polls. As some
economists have pointed out generally, and it resonates here even more,
the odds are greater that a voter will be killed in a traffic accident
on his way to the polls than that his vote will make a difference in the
election. It is an irrational act. That most states are uncompetitive
means that people are not amenable to new ideas, or new thinking, or
even having an open mind. If that does not change, and it is hard to see
how it can change, then the die is cast. America is not what it was,
and will never be again.
For
Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results
demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a
president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as
hostile to Israel. They voted to secure Obamas future at Americas
expense and at Israels expense in effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu
by a wide margin. A dangerous time is ahead. Under present
circumstances, it is inconceivable that the US will take any aggressive
action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli initiative.
That Obamas top aide Valerie Jarrett (i.e., Iranian-born Valerie
Jarrett) spent last week in Teheran is not a good sign. The US will
preach the importance of negotiations up until the production of the
first Iranian nuclear weapon and then state that the world must learn to
live with this new reality. As Obama has committed himself to
abolishing Americas nuclear arsenal, it is more likely that that
unfortunate circumstance will occur than that he will succeed in
obstructing Irans plans.
Obamas
victory could weaken Netanyahus re-election prospects, because Israelis
live with an unreasonable and somewhat pathetic fear of American
opinion and realize that Obama despises Netanyahu. A Likud defeat or a
diminution of its margin of victory is more probable now than yesterday.
That would not be the worst thing. Netanyahu, in fact, has never
distinguished himself by having a strong political or moral backbone,
and would be the first to cave to the American pressure to surrender
more territory to the enemy and acquiesce to a second (or third, if you
count Jordan) Palestinian state. A new US Secretary of State named John
Kerry, for example (he of the Jewish father) would not augur well.
Netanyahu remains the best of markedly poor alternatives. Thus, the
likeliest outcome of the upcoming Israeli elections is a center-left
government that will force itself to make more concessions and weaken
Israel an Oslo III.
But
this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent
empire, nor is there is an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the
exile. The most powerful empires in history all crumbled from the Greeks
and the Romans to the British and the Soviets. None of the collapses
were easily foreseen, and yet they were predictable in retrospect.
The
American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has
been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that
decline. Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic
excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations. The takers
outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come.
Across the world, America under Bush was feared but not respected. Under
Obama, America is neither feared nor respected. Radical Islam has had a
banner four years under Obama, and its prospects for future growth look
excellent. The Occupy riots across this country in the last two years
were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead years of unrest sparked
by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful who want to seize the
fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow
pace of redistribution.
Two
bright sides: Notwithstanding the election results, I arose this
morning, went to shul, davened and learned Torah afterwards. That is our
reality, and that trumps all other events. Our relationship with G-d
matters more than our relationship with any politician, R or D. And,
notwithstanding the problems in Israel, it is time for Jews to go home,
to Israel. We have about a decade, perhaps 15 years, to leave with
dignity and without stress. Thinking that it will always be because it
always was has been a repetitive and deadly Jewish mistake. America was
always the land from which positive aliya came Jews leaving on their
own, and not fleeing a dire situation. But that can also change. The
increased aliya in the last few years is partly attributable to young
people fleeing the high cost of Jewish living in America. Those costs
will only increase in the coming years. We should draw the appropriate
conclusions.
If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back.
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