I have a friend with whom I’ve been discussing politics, and we’ve branched off into more topics than a single email thread can handle, so I figured I’d invite him here and start breaking topics up into multiple threads for people to discuss. Here’s the most recent thing, based on a piece that I passed on to him that I thought explained a less often heard view of Barack Obama, but one I’ve discussed before.

An Old Newness
By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Many years ago, a great hitter named Paul Waner was nearing the end of his long career. He entered a ballgame with 2,999 hits—one hit away from the landmark total of 3,000, which so many hitters want to reach, but which relatively few actually do reach.

Waner hit a ball that the fielder did not handle cleanly but the official scorer called it a hit, making it Waner’s 3,000th. Paul Waner then sent word to the official scorer that he did not want that questionable hit to be the one that put him over the top. The official scorer reversed himself and called it an error. Later Paul Waner got a clean hit for number 3,000.

What reminded me of this is the great fervor that many seem to feel over the prospect of the first black President of the United States.

No doubt it is only a matter of time before there is a black president, just as it was only a matter of time before Paul Waner got his 3,000th hit. The issue is whether we want to reach that landmark so badly that we are willing to overlook how questionably that landmark is reached.

Paul Waner had too much pride to accept a scratch hit. Choosing a President of the United States is a lot more momentous than a baseball record. We the voters need to have far more concern about who we put in that office that holds the destiny of a nation and of generations yet unborn.

There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president—especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans.

Many people seem to regard elections as occasions for venting emotions, like cheering for your favorite team or choosing a Homecoming Queen.

The three leading candidates for their party’s nomination are being discussed in terms of their demographics - race, sex and age - as if that is what the job is about.

One of the painful aspects of studying great catastrophes of the past is discovering how many times people were preoccupied with trivialities when they were teetering on the edge of doom. The demographics of the presidency are far less important than the momentous weight of responsibility that office carries.

Just the power to nominate federal judges to trial courts and appellate courts across the country, including the Supreme Court, can have an enormous impact for decades to come. There is no point feeling outraged by things done by federal judges, if you vote on the basis of emotion for those who appoint them.

Barack Obama has already indicated that he wants judges who make social policy instead of just applying the law. He has already tried to stop young violent criminals from being tried as adults.

Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things - using the mantra of “change” endlessly - the cold fact is that virtually everything he has said about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s.

Protecting criminals, attacking business, increasing government spending, promoting a sense of envy and grievance, raising taxes on people who are productive and subsidizing those who are not—all this is a re-run of the 1960s.

We paid a terrible price for such 1960s notions in the years that followed, in the form of soaring crime rates, double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment. During the 1960s, ghettoes across the countries were ravaged by riots from which many have not fully recovered to this day.

The violence and destruction were concentrated not where there was the greatest poverty or injustice but where there were the most liberal politicians, promoting grievances and hamstringing the police.

Internationally, the approach that Senator Obama proposes - including the media magic of meetings between heads of state - was tried during the 1930s. That approach, in the name of peace, is what led to the most catastrophic war in human history.

Everything seems new to those too young to remember the old and too ignorant of history to have heard about it.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy and his latest book, “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”.

His response to it was:

Yeah these views are a little skewed. It is not as if Obama is invoking the names of the leaders that proposed such policies when the idea of employing them as the president.

What some conservatives don’t get about Obama, unlike most liberals, in the back of his head he knows exactly how the other side thinks. With that he doesn’t write of conservatives as fools for their thoughts but he keeps in mind that they might have a point and lets that effect his decision making.

I appreciate the share but it is an inaccurate view of Obama. There is a reason McCain modeled his slogan off of Obama’s; ‘Change You Can Believe In.’ Which is a constant slight to Obama. I have a huge problem with people not recognizing his accomplishments also. He lived in a 3rd world country and comes from single parent family. He studied Law at Harvard and became the first black president of their review. He work at a community organizer before getting into the state legislature in 1996. I don’t think being in politics for 12 years is inexperience. Most take him as a phenom that has appeared on the scene since 2004. And while it is true that was his entrance on the national stage, his accomplishments before hand are not being recognized.

When someone like Mitt Romney says that he was governor of MA then goes on about his success in the private sector no says anything about his experience.

And that idea of equating Neville Chamberlain to Obama is just so wrong. Barack Obama is not going to be doing favors for Ahmendinajad. What he is going to do is end a war that has no criteria for victory. That place is like Vietnam. Obama will consult the nations that surround an enemy and the United Nations. He will lead the nations of the world on whatever action the United States takes. In him the world sees a leader they can follow. They are holding their breath that America chooses him. I 2004 Osama bin Laden through his support behind Kerry because he wanted to end the war. It is hard to believe that reverse psychology works like that. Why would Osama want the Iraq war to end? So the U.S. can focus on Afghanistan maybe. Or so Al Quaeda can keep their number one recruitment spot maybe. He wanted Bush. He wants McCain. The nations of the world will be reluctant to follow McCain and his I don’t talk to enemies policy. He did say that two years ago when he talked about meeting with Hamas. The French are talking to them. Carter is talking to them. Maybe by talking to them they might start feeling like human beings and stop killing. Even Israeli officials know that they have to give them a state at some point, that is unless we kill them all. The latter is the wrong solution because that is what will have to happen if we don’t talk.

This probably should have been posted on a forum too. Thanks for passing that letter to me though. Those conservative letters confuse me because apparently there is one saying Obama is a muslim too. So wrong.

Oh on race. The only reason that race and sex of candidates are talked about is because the resistance to change. Jim Crow and Black Code basically nullified the 13th through 15th amendment. For a hundred years statutes were not practiced until the 1964 Civil Rights act was passed. On August 25 it will be 45 years to the day of the MLK’s speech (I think I misstated the date in the last e-mail). That is significant, no matter who you are. And whatever rationalization a person gives themselves to write off Obama it is their prerogative. I know in my heart that no matter what happens he has changed the rhetoric of this country and made people face the issue of whether they are really color blind. For those who don’t like him for his policies purely I congratulate them. By the way Condi Rice talks to Iran too. There’d be no difference in how she would employ foreign policy. She used to be a democrat, she was disillusioned with the Carter administration which is not unbelievable.

Thing is we can’t cut taxes forever without the idea of being fiscally responsible. Taxes can do good if there is responsible government. I like the idea of middle class tax cuts and tax hikes for upper class citizens because it won’t put the latter in poverty. Anyways, I believe Obama’s leadership is giving a more balanced approach to the nation. Now that the primary is officially over I think he is going to whip McCain.

My thoughts on this:
I don’t believe Obama has much of a clue about conservatives; I have known very few far leftists who do. More to the point, left wing Democrats talk a good talk about “bipartisanship” and “reaching across the aisle,” but in practice this is so much bunk. Republicans (McCain being a major example) have done most of the reaching out, but they rarely if ever get credit for it, and even more rarely are they rewarded by any kind of friendliness from liberals.

I will not back down from Barack’s inexperience because the list you give is grasping and weak. When you have to resort to living for a time in a 3rd world country, coming from a single parent family, being a community organizer, studying law, etc. to make his bones, that’s pretty sad. Those are the qualifications that might get one into the leadership of a mid-sized non-profit organization or company, or get one into middle leadership in a legislature. They are NOT qualifications for President, and can hardly compare to virtually everyone else who has been a serious candidate for the office in the past—and he’s like Junior Varsity compared to the Major League of that is the Presidency, and doesn’t even compare to McCain. He hasn’t even had the leadership, judgment, or guts to do anything of value in the legislature.

Um, Romney was a state governor…that’s not a qualification? Governors have long been recognized as better candidates for the Presidency than senators, by the way. And people like private sector experience because the government is so wasteful and corrupt and generally bungles everything it tries to do.

As for the war, no criteria for victory? How about a stable Iraq? That’s what’s been talked about for years, and there’s been much success, particularly recently. Face it: what has been going on since shortly after the initial combat operations is a Peacekeeping Mission. How can I say that? What else would you call placing troops in a country to prevent factional warfare and civil war, to retain order, to help stabilize a country, and to support rebuilding and humanitarian efforts? To end this peacekeeping effort abruptly would be the height of folly. As for talking with terrorists and legitimizing them, you haven’t been paying attention to who they are and how they take and take and take and just use whatever legitimacy or concessions they are able to get as fuel for more. Give an inch and they will take a mile. A policy of negotiating with terrorists will only cause more terrorism; any would-be leader who believes in that has some of the poorest judgment one can possibly imagine and is incredibly dangerous not just for this country but the whole freakin’ world.

Condi talks to Iran because she is the Secretary of State. That’s her job. It’s a lesser intermediary, and her talks are still conditional which is why they are infrequent. Obama’s discourse so far and his associations and past have brooked further division and racial tension. His church is based on racial division, and whatever political expediency causes him to distance himself from it, his long time association speaks louder than his words.

Taxes aren’t being continually cut, but I am certain with Obama’s socialist policies, we will have much higher taxes AND a much more expensive government. He’ll probably try to pay for it like Clinton did – by slashing the military. Well, we’ve seen what that does, and it’s folly simply because diverting military expenditure to social policies is irreversible. Government grows dramatically, and if the military is ever needed again, we get into wild deficit spending again, and the cycle repeats, continuing to grow the government – and the national debt – by leaps and bounds.

One last thing. “I know in my heart?” All this feel good language is indicative of what really drives Obama supporters – blind faith. You WANT to believe he has the experience and the policies to do good. His whole campaign has been designed around creating just this kind of response, so people will overlook or forgive so much and just focus on vague notions of “hope.”