Like A Rodgers and Hammerstein Song, "Getting To Know You, Getting To Know All About You"

From WhiteHouse.gov:

President George W. Bush and President-elect Barack Obama walk the Colonnade to the Oval Office Monday, Nov. 10, 2008, as the President and Mrs. Laura Bush welcomed the President-elect and his wife, Michelle, to the White House. White House photo by Eric Draper

Update: Sorry we couldn't resist the Rodgers and Hammerstein allusion. As Hammerstein wrote for another tune, "[t]he corn is as high as an elephant's eye."

Bush's Approval In Western KY Helps Mitch

Mark Hebert reports that President Bush's approval rating is 52 percent in Western Kentucky, 37 percent statewide.

As Hebert notes, Western Kentucky traditionally has voted in large numbers for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. Given Bruce Lunsford's attempts to yoke McConnell to Bush, the president's continued support west of I-65 is good news for McConnell: his base is secure.

McConnell's approval rating has exceeded Bush's in Kentucky by a wide margin all along. Kentucky voters understand that McConnell's position as party leader requires him to shepherd the president's legislative agenda, even --as with immigration -- when Bush and McConnell see the issue differently. In that sense, the party leader wears two hats. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid acknowledged as much when he spoke at University of Louisville a few months back.

Lunsford's attempts to strap Bush to McConnell's back look increasingly desperate. Take his most recent commercial, in which Lunsford implies that anyone who made less than $15 million last year (the average pay of an oil company CEO) is a loser. All of us non-CEOs, according to Lunsford's logic, should channel our bitterness at Bush and McConnell.

It's a blatant appeal to class warfare, much like John Edwards attempted, to no avail. And as with Edwards, it looks silly and condescending for a multi-millionaire like Lunsford to suggest that voters should feel bad about their lives because they make less money than a CEO. Lunsford would have to impose a form of socialism to level the playing field to the extent that every worker is paid like the CEO from an oil company.

The old Soviet Union tried that ploy; it starts by nationalizing all industry so that the government owns the means of production. It didn't work so well. Consequently, the Obama-Lunsford approach would offer a softer, friendlier form of socialism --an accretion of increasingly burdensome taxes and regulations. All that will do is discourage investors from taking the risk to explore and extract new sources of oil.

If Bruce really wants to put more money in the pockets of us non-CEOs, he needs to tell his his buddies Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to let America tap our own natural resources by drilling for oil here and now.

Oil Prices

I find it interesting that after President Bush rescinds the Executive Order on off-coast drilling that oil prices have started to drop. You won’t read about this observation in the media.

Yet, it seems that if we send out signals to the “speculators” that we are even considering drilling that they get the message that speculating in oil may not always be profitable and they leave the market. This is another example of the “Free Market System” that has worked so well for the past two hundred plus years for our country. Alexander Hamilton was a very smart man for the vision he had on the Free Market System.

President Bush’s rescinding the Executive Order has no real power on allowing us to drill but it does send a signal to the speculators that the future of oil is changing and cause the effect of lower oil prices. So we see that the Free Market system does have power over the speculators. We don't need controls on the oil companies because the Free Market System works.

We have all heard that if we start drilling now it would take ten years to get it to the market. My thought is that if it is going to take ten years then we should have started drilling yesterday!

Scott McClellan: The David Stockman of the Bush White House?

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary from 2003 through 2006, is splashing around in the media waves these days, holding out his new book for the sharks who think they smell blood spilling from the Bush White House. Undoubtedly McClellan is counting on sales of his turncoat "confession" to bring in enough cash to make up for his years on a government salary.

McClellan, who just turned forty, reminds me of another youngster who served in the White House and thought himself wiser than his elder President and decided to tell the world about it: David Stockman, President Reagan's first budget director. Beginning with the now-infamous Atlantic Monthly article, "The Education of David Stockman", the liberal media touted the thirty-something Stockman as the ultimate Reagan White House insider who supposedly came clean on everything that was wrong with Reagan's economic policies.

But we all know how the Stockman v. Reagan match-up ended. Reagan is now viewed as one of the nation's greatest presidents and the architect of one of the longest eras of economic expansion in the country's history and Stockman, well . . . After suffering in obscurity for many years (a risk when one gains fame early, then burns bridges to friends who helped get you there), Stockman made the news again last year when he was indicted in a $1.6 billion fraud case involving his company. The now sixty-something Stockman was accused by the U.S. Attorney of having "resorted to lies, tricks, and fraud."

This is not to say Scott McClellan will meet a like fate, or will be accused of similar activities as David Stockman, but the Stockman saga suggests skepticism should be in order for a tell-all memoir from a sanctimonious former White House whippersnapper. It may not be the end of the story for the subject being discussed or the young writer.

Please note: The postings of "G. Morris", written by John K. Bush and which end in 2016, stated his views as of the dates of posting and should not be understood as current assertions of his views. The postings, which have not been altered since they came to an end, remain on this blog to preserve the historical record. In 2017, Mr. Bush took a position that precludes further public political comments or endorsements. He will no longer be contributing to this blog.

Party Wreckers, Left and Right

Peggy Noonan has some harsh words for the president:

George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.

I agree that Bush has hurt the Republican Party in many respects. But you have to give the man credit where credit is due: at least he got it right on the judges. Presidents come and go, but judges with life tenure tend to stick around.

Noonan also condemns what Bill Clinton is doing to the Democrats:

[T]he Clintons are tearing the party apart. It will not be the same after this. It will not be the same after its most famous leader, and probable ultimate victor, treated a proud and accomplished black man who is a U.S. senator as if he were nothing, a mere impediment to their plans.

Surprisingly, Noonan's thesis on Clinton is echoed by none other than Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich (via Instapundit):

I write this more out of sadness than anger. Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic party. While it may be that all is fair in love, war, and politics, it’s not fair – indeed, it’s demeaning – for a former President to say things that are patently untrue (such as Obama’s anti-war position is a “fairy tale”) or to insinuate that Obama is injecting race into the race when the former President is himself doing it.

Bill Clinton's comportment during his wife's campaign -- and his anger management problems -- gives rise to the question: how long has he been unhinged? Was he always this way, and the White House advance team just spared us the image?