Why a Politician's Character Matters
by Thomas Sowell -
What was he thinking? That was the first question that came to mind when the story of New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s involvement with a prostitution ring was reported in the media.
It was also the first question that came to mind when star quarterback Michael Vick ruined his career and lost his freedom over his involvement in illegal dog fighting. It is a question that arises when other very fortunate people risk everything for some trivial satisfaction.
Many in the media refer to Eliot Spitzer as some moral hero who fell from grace. Spitzer was never a moral hero. He was an unscrupulous prosecutor who threw his power around to ruin people, even when he didn’t have any case with which to convict them of anything.
Because he was using his overbearing power against businesses, the anti-business left idolized him, just as they idolized Ralph Nader before him as some sort of secular saint because he attacked General Motors.
What Eliot Spitzer did was not out of character. It was completely in character for someone with the hubris that comes with the ability to misuse his power to make or break innocent people.
After John Whitehead, former head of Goldman Sachs, wrote an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing Attorney General Spitzer’s handling of a case involving Maurice Greenberg, Spitzer was quoted by Whitehead as saying: “I will be coming after you. You will pay the price. This is only the beginning and you will pay dearly for what you have done.”
When you start thinking of yourself as a little tin god, able to throw your weight around to bully people into silence, it is a sign of a sense of being exempt from the laws and social rules that apply to other people.
For someone with this kind of hubris to risk his whole political career for a fling with a prostitute is no more surprising than for Michael Vick to throw away millions to indulge his taste for dog fighting or for Leona Helmsley to avoid paying taxes — not because she couldn’t easily afford to pay taxes and still have more money left than she could ever spend — but because she felt above the rules that apply to “the little people.”
What is almost as scary as having someone like Eliot Spitzer holding power is having so many pundits talking as if this is just a “personal” flaw in Governor Spitzer that should not disqualify him for public office.
 New York Governor Eliot Spitzer |
In this age, when it is considered the height of sophistication to be “non-judgmental,” one of the corollaries is that “personal” failings have no relevance to the performance of official duties.
What that amounts to, ultimately, is that character doesn’t matter. In reality, character matters enormously, more so than most things that can be seen, measured or documented.
Character is what we have to depend on when we entrust power over ourselves, our children and our society to government officials.
We cannot risk all that for the sake of the fashionable affectation of being more non-judgmental than thou.
Currently, various facts are belatedly beginning to leak out that give us clues to the character of Barack Obama. But to report these facts is being characterized as a “personal” attack.
Barack Obama’s personal and financial association with a man under criminal indictment in Illinois is not just a “personal” matter. Nor is his 20 years of going to a church whose pastor has praised Louis Farrakhan and condemned the United States in both sweeping terms and with obscene language.
The Obama camp likens mentioning such things to criticizing him because of what members of his family might have said or done. But it was said, long ago, that you can pick your friends but not your relatives.
Obama chose to be part of that church for 20 years. He was not born into it. His “personal” character matters, just as Eliot Spitzer’s “personal” character matters — and just as Hillary Clinton’s character would matter if she had any.
Thomas Sowell is a Senior Fellow at The Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. He has published dozens of books on economics, education, race, and other topics. His most recent book is Economic Facts and Fallacies, published in December 2007.
| The Clintons, Mubaraks and Bushes | |
By Stephan Richter | |
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak must be quite pleased about Musharraf's machinations in Pakistan — as he is currently out of the global limelight. Still, he faces charges of a highly dynastic style of democracy — given the rumors about his son Gamal as his successor. So what's a man to say?
When examining the Middle East, the U.S. media regularly express their concern about the way in which Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak is trying to hand over the presidency after 26 years to his son Gamal. Full of moral indignation, they charge that making one’s son president smacks of nepotism — and shows a blatant disregard for democracy. Given that barrage, here — presented in the form of an inner monologue — is Hosni’s side of the story, as he looks at the United States from the other side of the Atlantic and from the inside of Abdeen Palace, where Egypt’s president resides. “Now, I know,” says Hosni Mubarak, as if speaking to himself, “U.S. democracy Cover up
fighters are hard on my case, especially after the debacle of ‘bringing’ democracy to Iraq. 
"Has anybody who criticizes me for ‘machining’ Gamal’s elevation looked at the way in which Hillary Clinton tried to muscle her way to the Democratic Party’s nomination?"
“What better way for America's leading newspapers, such as the Washington Post, to cover up their amateurishly short-sighted editorial support of the Iraq invasion than by going after my efforts to let my son take the reins of Egypt?
“The Americans probably believe that criticizing me fervently — rather than coming clean on their own failures — represents some kind of catharsis.
A very long presidency
“Now, I realize there are some problems with my trying to shoo my son into the post of president. But I am really tired of serving in this post. Twenty-six years of the daily grind of being de facto king of Egypt is enough for any human.
“Second, don’t those who criticize me so ardently abroad realize just how complex and risky a venture it is to hold Egypt together — not to mention steering it away from the cliff of fundamentalist extremism?"
Complex efforts
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“It is all nice and well to call for open and fair elections, but the fact of the matter is we are a country on the precipice. Three times the population of Iraq, but with none of its oil. A grand history millennia ago, just as Iraq, that now-failed country.
“Always the object of foreign interventions, even if the biggest, most recent one in our case lies half a century back, when the Brits, Americans and French fought over the Suez Canal. Thankfully, and unlike in Iraq’s case, we came out victorious — effectively saved by the wise Americans against our former colonizers.
The results of conquest
”But back to Gamal, my son. I definitely trained him well — and have prepared him for a long time to offer the people of Egypt a modern, contemporary, skilled version of a leader.
The training of Gamal
“What’s so strange about that? Isn’t that what father Bush, a president,
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“And how about Senator Albert Gore? He and his wife raised Al, Jr. — now a distinguished Nobel Peace Prize winner — to get to the White House ever since the poor boy was born.
"As the Gore saga shows, the story doesn't always work out as planned. And frankly, neither is there a guarantee that I will succeed with my plan to have Gamal become President of Egypt.
What is the plan
“Sure, I have pretty good control of the National Democratic Party of Egypt, which would nominate him for the post.
“But has anybody who criticizes me for ‘machining’ Gamal’s elevation looked at the way in which Hillary Clinton tried to muscle her way to the Democratic Party’s nomination — by sheer force, of money, of networks, of clannish loyalties, of subservience to the ruling powers inside the party?
Hillary and Gamal
“What’s so different in our case? Not much. Sure, this being the Middle East, our process is a bit more opaque, but then again,
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“Plus, unlike Hillary, who has never truly run anything other than the First Lady’s offices under Bill and now a U.S. Senator’s office, Gamal has had executive responsibilities. He has ably served as General Secretary of the Policy Committee — and most recently as Deputy Secretary General of the National Democratic Party.
“Given all that, I do resent the self-righteous way in which American elites criticize me. Don’t they know that Gamal has to be elected by the people? Egypt is not a country like Japan — where the leading party elects a new head, who then automatically becomes head of government.
Opaque elections
“Now, I know people say our elections here are rigged. Well, yes, there is a little opaqueness here, as in many other places.
"Anyway, who on earth are the Americans to call me names for that?
Who has the fair elections
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“And haven't you seen, once again, stories surfacing in the mighty, high-tech United States about worries regarding voting machine irregularities?
“Let’s face it. What the Republican elites do so effectively to restrain the voting rights and ranks of the social underclass is not very different from how we try to suppress the Islamists’ vote.
“With one crucial difference: We Egyptians aren’t the ones who are constantly calling the Americans names for presumed or very real voting irregularities."
Blaming others
Having said all that to himself, Mubarak the Elder then reflected upon which U.S. president in his lifetime he had really liked and admired.
Favorite presidents
None more than Texas’s really great president, LBJ. Truth be told, he always felt especially
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Whether it was John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963 or Anwar Sadat’s in October 1981, Lyndon and Hosni are, in effect, blood brothers — rising to lead the nation through tumultuous times.
Firm in his knowledge of close kinship with one of modern America’s deftest political operators, Hosni Mubarak all of a sudden felt pretty calm and self-assured about the odds of handing the reins to his son Gamal.
Handing over the reins
His son's odds to become President of Egypt, he thought, are at least as good as Hillary’s in her country. What would that first meeting between the two would be like? And who would be a smoother operator, more respected by their nation’s public?
“Let’s wait and see,” Hosni mused and turned out the lights for the night.
| The U.S. Dollar: From Greenback to Cheapback | |
By Peter Morici | |
What are the roles of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury and the Bush Administration in creating and perpetuating the fall of the dollar? As Peter Morici explains, a reliable banking system and a revival of U.S. credit are the keys to avoiding an economic recession of unknown depth and duration.
The dollar is trading at all-time lows against the euro and gold for good reasons. Continuous U.S. administrations have flooded the world with greenbacks, and global investors by now have little confidence in the management of the U.S. economy. During the Bush years alone, the U.S. trade deficit The rising deficit
has doubled. The deficit has exceeded $700 billion each of the last three years — and is more than 5% of GDP. The Federal Reserve has direct regulatory responsibility for the large U.S. banks — and it is Ben Bernanke’s job to require them to fix their business practices and resurrect the market for bonds backed by bank loans.
The Bush Administration’s energy policy — which emphasizes incentives for domestic oil production and letting rising prices instigate conservation — has failed. Domestic crude oil production is falling, the price of gas has risen from $1.51 to $3.21, automakers have populated U.S. roads with fuel-guzzling SUVs, and petroleum now accounts for about $380 billion of the U.S. trade deficit.
As U.S. purchases from the Middle Kingdom exceed sales there by nearly five to one, the trade deficit with China is about $250 billion.
The Asian market
The Bush Administration has sought changes in China’s currency policies through diplomacy — and has failed.
The remainder of the trade deficit is largely autos and parts from Japan and Korea, which through various means have kept the yen and won cheap too.
A balancing act
The huge trade deficit must be financed either by attracting foreign investment in new productive assets in the United States — or by printing IOUs. Investment has only provided about 10% of necessary cash, so each year the United States sells currency, bank deposits,
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That floods world financial markets with U.S. dollars and paper assets that function much like U.S. dollars — what economists call liquidity. And it evokes an iron law of the universe. If you print too much money, it won’t have any value.
Until recently, most of that borrowed purchasing power was put into the hands of U.S. consumers by the large Wall Street banks. Essentially, through mortgage brokers and regional banks, those Wall Street banks loaned Americans money to buy homes and refinance their mortgages. In turn, the banks got the cash needed by bundling mortgages, as well as auto loans and credit card debt, into collateralized-debt-obligations — bonds backed by consumer promises to pay — for sale to fixed-income investors, hedge funds and others.
Credit problems
The bankers could get reasonably rich on this scheme — but got greedy.
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Now investors ranging from U.S. insurance companies to the Saudi royals are not much interested in buying bonds created by large U.S. banks — and the banks can no longer make loans to many credit-worthy consumers and businesses. Without credit, the U.S. economy cannot grow and prosper.
In the hands of the Fed
The Federal Reserve has direct regulatory responsibility for the large U.S. banks — and it is Ben Bernanke’s job to require them to fix their business practices and resurrect the market for bonds backed by bank loans.
Yet, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke has offered no plan to address these problems, or even acknowledged the urgency of the situation. And without a well-functioning banking system, the U.S. economy heads into recession of uncertain depth and duration.
Going gold
International investors, recognizing the U.S. economy lacks competent helmsmen at Treasury and the Federal Reserve, are fleeing the dollar for the best available substitute — the euro and gold.
When George W. Bush was inaugurated, the euro was trading at 94 cents, and gold cost $266 an ounce. Now they are trading at $1.52 and $985 an ounce. That is a plain vote of no confidence by global models in the Bush–Bernanke economic model.
Center Field: This family's answer to the menace of terrorism
Last week was what I am starting to think about as a typically strange week in Israel. Even before the horrific attack on Mercaz Harav here in Jerusalem we were living what I think of as the great Israeli disconnect.
On the one hand, our major focus was on sticking to the shigra, a new word I learned this year - the routine. My wife and I spent much of the week juggling. On Thursday for example, we worked on helping our 10-year-old son with his shishim shana Israel-at-60 school project, getting our seven-year-old son to the stress test he had to take to play in his baseball little league, dropping our five-year-old daughter off at her swimming lesson, and preparing our 12-year-old daughter for her youth movement tiyul - trip.
On the streets of Jerusalem the big headline was that the winter had lifted, spring was in the air. The meteorologists actually warned of sharav, a hot and dry spell, as our friends in Montreal struggled with another storm - this time 18 centimeters of snow mixed with 5 centimeters of ice pellets.
In Jerusalem, the weather shift was so swift it felt as if someone had just flicked a switch. All of a sudden, the air was lighter, more fragrant, the sun brighter, more welcoming. Looking at the delightful explosion of red, blue, pink, purple, and white flowers suddenly blooming in our yard, I learned what a kalanit - an anemone - actually looks like, rather than simply thinking about it as some lyric in romantic Hebrew songs. I spent part of Thursday afternoon uncovering and cleaning garden furniture.
I AM NOT smart enough or deep enough for this age of terrorism. I don't know how to square all that routine beauty with the pain of Sderot, the trauma of Ashkelon, the horrible choices Israeli soldiers and their commanders had to be making in split-seconds in Gaza, again and again as we enjoyed our Jerusalem spring.
I cannot reconcile our borderline-boring but oh so safe and soothing familiar family routine with the tragedy of Roni Yihye the 47-year-old father of four with whom I identify (for some strange reason) killed last week at Sapir College, the heartbreaking stories of Palestinian children tragically or cynically caught recently in the crossfire, or the despairing families of the three soldiers killed this week - one of whom was a 27-year-old Beduin volunteer with eight children, including a baby born just last month, another of whom was an essential hearing and speaking link for his two deaf parents.
It seems that headlines roll over everyone here in Israel at an astounding pace that you get inured to it, until the horror actually happens to you.
And then the trauma of Thursday night hits. At approximately the same time as the terrorist was shooting up the seminary, a holy place of learning, I was showing two young guests from San Diego our neighborhood, Jerusalem's German Colony. We reached Yemin Moshe, standing at one of Jerusalem's many stunning overlooks, soaking in the entrancing beauty of the illuminated Old City walls. We then blithely strolled along the shops and cafes of Emek Refaim with no idea that at least eight young men, who probably had done the same thing many times, were having their lives cruelly taken from them at that same moment, on the other side of town.
SO WHICH is the reality and which the illusion? I don't really know.
And yes, the first human tendency is to hide, to run, to sweep up your children, hug them tightly, and keep them far away from the violence. But when you think about the cold-blooded killer, spraying hundreds of bullets at defenseless students, or the barbarians in Gaza and the West Bank who celebrated this bloodbath in a house of learning with victory shots in the air and candy thrown in the street, it becomes clear that we cannot hide, we cannot run - because they will never stop, they will never be satisfied. It sounds demagogic, paranoid, unenlightened, and most unscholarly but alas true: it really is yesterday Sderot, today Jerusalem, and tomorrow the West.
And we all have to do what we can. Some, like one of the older students at the yeshiva, Yitzhak Dadon, age 40, will hear the shots, scramble up to a roof, look through the window, and eventually help stop the tragedy with two shots to the terrorist's head, followed by a 29-year-old Paratroopers Capt. David Shapira, who ran from bathing his children across the street, ignored police warnings that it was dangerous to enter, and actually killed the terrorist.
Some, like friends in Montreal and all over the civilized world, will stand in silent prayer or loudly voice their outrage at rallies. And some, like my family and I are privileged to be doing right now, will stick to our routines, clean our garden furniture, go to baseball and swimming, make that presentation at school and enjoy the outing. And in doing that we will show that we, who love democracy and yearn for peace, will not be moved. We will not be discouraged. And we will enjoy this high quality of life, appreciating life, because that is what it means - to be a free people in our homeland, as we send warm regards, proudly, safely, calmly, happily, to our concerned friends and loved ones from Jerusalem.
The writer is professor of history at McGill University, on leave in Jerusalem since July. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. His next book Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents will be published by Basic Books this spring.
'Obama would be great for Israel'
Jimmy Carter's former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski is not an adviser to US presidential hopeful Barack Obama, and those saying he is are trying to besmirch the Democratic candidate among Jewish voters, Mel Levine, one of Obama's seven Middle East advisers, told The Jerusalem Post during a visit to Israel.
Senator Barack Obama greets supporters before the Ohio primaries debate
Photo: AP , AP
Levine said Brzezinski endorsed Obama because of his opposition to the war in Iraq, that the two had spoken only a couple of times, and that they had never discussed Israel or the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
"I have worked for Obama's Middle East foreign policy team for the last nine months, and Brzezinski's name has never come up as part of the process," he said.
Levine also said that another familiar face in Washington who sends off alarm bells in the Jewish community because of his pro-Palestinian positions, former special assistant to Bill Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs Robert Malley, was also not an adviser to Obama as some have claimed.
"I have been told that he, like a couple of hundred other people, has submitted ideas to the campaign, but he is not a foreign policy adviser," Levine said.
Levine, a former congressman from Los Angeles known in the Jewish community for his staunchly pro-Israel positions and record in Washington, was in Israel last week on a private visit. While he was here he took some time to lobby for Obama, a man whom he said would be "great" to Israel.
Levine is part of Obama's Middle East foreign policy team that includes Dennis Ross, the former Clinton administration's Middle East envoy; Tony Lake, a former national security adviser to Bill Clinton; Rep. Robert Wexler, a Democrat from Florida; Denis McDonough, former foreign policy adviser to then-Senate majority leader Tom Daschle; Dan Shapiro, a former aide to Florida Sen. Bill Nelson; and Eric Lynn, the former foreign policy adviser to Florida Congressman Peter Deutsch.
Levine said that while Obama did come up in his 30-minute conversation with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, which he described as a private, personal meeting, he did not deliver any message from or to the presidential hopeful.
Obama raised eyebrows recently when, during a meeting with Jewish communal leaders in Cleveland, he took issue with what he said was a "strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel."
When asked, in light of those comments, how Obama as president would work with Binyamin Netanyahu, in the eventuality that the Likud leader might one day be prime minister again, Levine said that Obama was not taking an anti-Likud line.
"I'm sure he will work with whatever government is in power," Levine said. "I think he was just saying that there are American Jews who don't agree with Likud policies, and that doesn't mean they are any less supportive of Israel."
Picking up a theme from Obama's campaign speeches, Levine said Obama appealed to him because he could break Washington's "gridlock."
The former congressman, who first met Obama about 18 months ago, said, "I felt from the first time I met him that this is a person who has the ability, given his talent and his background, to unify America and to transcend traditional gridlock in Washington that will make America a stronger international player and even a better friend of Israel."
Asked how breaking Washington's gridlock helped Israel, Levine said the more unified the US was, the greater its stature would be internationally, which would in turn benefit Israel.
"To me, one of the greatest crises we face because of the Bush administration policy is the isolation of America in the world," he said. "It is much harder for us to get our allies to do things, much harder for us to get countries to reciprocate."
Levine said the "greatest tragedy of our Iraq policy" was that it had unwittingly benefited Iran. And Iran, he said, "creates far and away the greatest danger to Israel on the face of the earth."
As to Obama's stated willingness to engage Teheran in dialogue without precondition, Levine said the candidate was starting from the premise that the administration's current polices had failed in getting Iran either to stop terrorism or to halt its nuclear march.
Obama, Levine said, believed that the way to stop Iran was with a combination of carrots and sticks. "He believes that if you use carrots and sticks, and engage in multilateral, aggressive diplomacy, then if you need to use the military option or do anything that needs to be done, you are much more likely to get support of allies, more international support, and broader American support."
He also said that Obama would be better able than US President George W. Bush to get allies to support sanctions against Iran.
"I think he has the potential to get our allies to be much more cooperative with us across the board," he said. "I think a foreign policy led by Obama will have much more credibility among our allies."
Asked whether Bush was good for Israel, Levine said, "I think that Bush has tried very hard to be good for Israel, and his heart is in the right place. But I think his policies have failed. And I think his policies have made Israel less secure, and America less secure."
Those who argue that Bush is the most pro-Israel president ever to sit in Washington often say one of the most important things Bush did for Israel was give it the military maneuverability to do what it thought it needed to bring down terrorism.
Asked whether he thought Obama would give Israel similar latitude, Levine said, "My sense is that Obama will respect Israel's needs to protect itself and will affirm those needs. Everything I have heard from him makes me believe he understands the vulnerability Israel has to terrorism, and that terrorism is the root of so many [of the region's] problems."
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