Retroculture

Retroculture
By Daniel G. Jennings
In his ongoing series of brilliant essays upon the “New Conservatism,” America’s most thoughtful conservative, Paul Weyrich, has put forward a fascinating concept: “Retroculture.” That is an effort to make America more like it was a couple of generations ago in the 1940s or 50s or at least to restore the values that made America in those decades.
Weyrich calls for a restoration, renewal might be a better word, of traditional American culture and society as it was before the 1960s hence a retroculture. He has in mind an effort to restore the culture similar to New Urbanism which seeks to restore traditional architecture and urban design. Weyrich points out that in architecture retro is in, a few decades ago it was fashionable to bulldoze old buildings, even entire neighborhoods to make way for new buildings in the name of progress. Now all the effort seems to go into preserving and restoring those buildings not as museums but as something people alive today can use. At the same time architects and designers are creating buildings, neighborhoods even entire communities in traditional forms and eschewing modern architecture.
Weyrich wonders if a similar effort to create a retroculture to promote and restore traditional values and traditional society might work. Of course we have to ask ourselves what a retroculture is and what it would look like?
A good starting point would be an effort to examine what we might call “Classic America,” i.e. America before 1960, and determine which elements of that society we want to preserve and promote and which elements we want to leave in the past. Yes there was a lot of good in pre 1960 America strong family values, a strong work ethic, patriotism, faith, respect, manners, class and style to name just a few things. But there was an ugly side to that America: racism, mindless obedience to authority, hysterical fears, militarism are just a few of the evils that era featured.
We could make a list of the things we want to bring back or promote say: civility, style, good manners, Classic American music, film, literature and television, faith, family values, traditional communities and the bad things we don’t want: racism, jingoism, sympathy for Communism, mindless faith in government and technology, naivete.
We might also ask ourselves what went wrong with Classic America, if it was so great why did large segments of the population reject it? Why was a seemingly vibrant culture so vulnerable to social upheavals and political chaos of the sixties and seventies? How do we revive what was great about Classic America without opening the door to more social and political upheaval?
I don’t know but one thing is sure the battle to recreate a Classic America will not be won in the political arena. Passing legislation or resorting to censorship won’t undo decades of Cultural Marxism and social upheaval. Such actions make politicians feel good but in the long run they will be meaningless.
No I suppose this war will be won or lost on a cultural level. That is by injecting Retroculture into the culture and offering it as a healthy alternative to main stream culture.
This has already occurred on a small scale, for example Tom Clancy’s novels which celebrate old fashioned patriotism and the military have done much to restore respect and support for the military and the federal government. “The Passion of the Christ” helped bring faith and Christianity back to the big screen. Movies like “The Lord of the Rings” promote old fashioned heroism.
Can it work? I don’t know but it’s certainly worth a try. One thing is for certain if conservatives want retroculture to work and “Classic America” to be revived they’ll need to move far beyond politics.

Fair Tax

Fair Tax: An Unfair Welfare Scheme
By Daniel G. Jennings
The latest surefire fix all solution for America’s unfair and wonky tax system is something called the “Fair Tax.*” On paper, Fair Tax which is being promoted in a best-selling book** and by a number of Congress, sounds great. In reality, it is a welfare scheme that is as unfair and bureaucratic as our present tax system.
Fair Tax is a scheme for a national sales tax, the basic idea is that all consumer purchases would be taxed at a 17 percent rate to pay for the federal government. At the same time all federal income taxes including Social Security and Medicare taxes would be eliminated.
Fair Tax is unfair because of what won’t be taxed: used items and business to business purchases. Under Fair Tax, millionaire movie star and comic book collector Nicholas Cage could sell one of his 1940s Superman comic books worth $1 million and he wouldn’t pay the Fair Tax, he’s selling a used good. Meanwhile a kid who buys a brand new Superman comic book for $2.50, or whatever comic books sell for these days, would pay the Fair Tax. That’s not very fair is it? Yet that’s how the Fair Tax would work, people who sell antiques and collector’s items wouldn’t pay Fair Tax. Average folk who buy new stuff would.
The business to business provision is even worse, if a big corporation buys a new private jet for the CEO to fly to his vacation home in Aruba that’s a business expense that wouldn’t be taxed. If Joe Six Pack buys a new car to drive to his job he pays the Fair Tax. How is that fair?
Worse, under the Fair Tax schemes posted on the Internet, the poor would get a refund check each month.* I don’t know about you but that sounds like a welfare entitlement to me.
It also sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare just like our current tax system. People spend big money to pay tax preparers to get a tax refund check. The government spends a fortune to collect taxes from the working class in order to send them back. Wouldn’t a system that lets the poor keep their money and taxes the rich be more sensible and truly fair?
So the Fair Tax is not only unfair it’s a thinly disguised scheme to expand welfare. A scheme that has many characteristics of our current sick tax system.
What would be better? Well, a Value Added Tax system, in which taxes would be levied on each level of business might be a better solution. So would a flat tax especially one which exempts the Middle Class and hits the rich.
Still no matter how you look at it the Fair Tax is anything but Fair.
** See www.fairtax.org
* “The Fair Tax” by Nick Boortz.

Have I Missed Something?

Have I Missed Something?
By Daniel G. Jennings, Angry Pundit
I’ve been monitoring the news lately and I’m beginning to wonder, have I missed something? Is the War on Terror over? Have our troops wiped out Al Qaeda’s leadership? Have Mr. Bin Laden and Mr. Zaquarri walked in and surrendered to our troops? Has Al Qaeda disbanded and called off the Jihad against it?
I ask these questions because of recent news stories. In Europe: the self-proclaimed champions of human rights are up in arms about secret prisons, the CIA’s efforts to round up, imprison and interrogate terrorists. In Washington, President Bush has backed down and agreed to Senator McCain’s ban on torture and now The New York Times and its apologists in the Democratic Party are attacking the President for ordering our spies to eavesdrop upon the communications of potential terrorists. So it looks like we are now more concerned about the “rights” of those who want to kill us than the fanatics who are plotting to destroy us.
It looks like a large segment of our political leadership and our media elite have decided that the war on terror is over and there is no more threat. The danger is that nobody seems to have told the bad guys that. Although the self proclaimed defenders of civil liberties and human rights don’t want to admit Al Qaeda is still out there plotting new atrocities against us. The war is far from over, and we are still in grave danger.
Somewhere in his hideout Bin Laden must be laughing his head off and thanking Allah for this. This talk of civil rights and perceived lowering of our defenses will embolden the terrorists and encourage them to rachet up the violence against us.
Those responsible for Sept. 11 are still out there and they want to hurt us. Our success in Iraq and Afghanistan gives them even more reason to attack us.
We are living in extraordinary times when our nation faces an extraordinary threat. We are in grave danger of a catastrophic terror attack or series of terror attacks that could hurt and kill dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands or in a worse case scenario hundreds of thousands of Americans. On Sept. 11 two of our greatest cities were attacked and several thousand Americans were killed. Shortly afterwards somebody, (who still has not been caught) attempted to spread one of the deadliest biological weapons known to man, the anthrax virus, through our mail system in an obvious attempt to infect millions.
Faced with such extraordinary threats, President Bush took reasonable action. He ordered the CIA and military to do whatever it took to track down, capture and interrogate the terrorists. He ordered the National Security Agency to monitor the communications of suspected terrorists. Bush did exactly what Lincoln or Truman would have done in his place, he did his duty by taking reasonable steps to defend the lives of the American people.
Now Mr. Bush is being attacked by arrogant fools who refuse to see the real threat and instead listen to hysterical voices in the media that claim our national reputation and civil liberties are in danger. What is frightening is that these fools are having some effect and may succeed in tying the hands of our defenders.
It’s also disgusting to see our political leaders more concerned about the “rights” of our enemies than the lives of the American people. Congress isn’t addressing crises like the high cost of fuel and medical care or the lack of health insurance that affect average Americans’ lives. Instead it is smearing the reputation of our military and intelligence agencies while worrying about the rights of fanatics who want to kill us.
There is no evidence that Americans’ civil rights are in danger, the Bush administration’s security measure are restrained and specific. There have been no witch hunts or concentration camps. None of the monstrous abuses committed by that liberal icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who locked average Americans in what he openly called concentration camps during World War Two because they had Japanese sounding names and their ethnic group didn’t have enough votes to impress him, have reoccurred.
Nor is there any evidence that our national reputation is in danger, overseas a small elite of intellectuals is angry at us, an elite that hated us long before Sept. 11. You can’t tell me that average people around the world actually care about the rights of terrorists or what Americans do to them. I imagine an honest poll in most of the world’s nations would show that the man in the street doesn’t give a damn what the US military does to captured terrorists. Just once I’d like to see an American journalist go into a pub in Liverpool or Birmingham and ask real Englishmen what they think. The intellectual is likely to be shocked by a reaction like: “I wish Tony Blair had the @#!%$^ balls to put a rope around those (censored) characters necks like your president does.” from a loyal Labor Party Voter.
Yet this nonsense has become a political issue in the United States and a major one at that. It’s a sad, distressing and scary situation.
There is a potential upside to all of this, when the next major terror attack occurs the fools like Sen. John McCain who are wrapping themselves up in the flag and screaming about terrorists’ rights will be hoisted on their own petards. When the real bad guys attack and commit another atrocity a lot of political careers will be over and a lot of short sighted, self righteous fools will find themselves seeking new jobs.
At this moment all I can say is Thank God we have a man like George Bush in the White House. No he isn’t perfect but at least he has the character and courage to do what needs to be done. Hopefully, his replacement will be cut from the same mold. If not we could be in a lot of trouble.
So Mr. Bush stay the course and battle on. The American public is with you and the idiots screaming about civil liberties and human rights will find that out at the next election. Note: Hillary Clinton is well aware of these facts Mr. Bush and she’s with you because she wants another eight years in the big White Jail on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Border Fence

Border Fence is No Solution To Illegal Immigration
By Daniel G. Jennings
H.L. Mencken once wrote “There is always a well known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible and wrong.”*
The well-known “neat and plausible” solution to the illegal immigration crisis is the border fence. That is the scheme put forward by Congressmen and others to build a giant fence along the US – Mexican border from the Pacific at San Diego to the Gulf of Mexico at Brownsville, Texas.
The idea behind the border fence is that a barrier on the border will block all illegal immigrants from entering the United States because the majority of illegal immigrants come in overland from Mexico. Unfortunately, the lure of good paying jobs (by Latin American standards) and opportunity in the United States will still be there. So will the desperate poverty south of the border that drives immigrants north.
If they can’t come in by walking the illegal immigrants will find another way in. Most likely they will turn to organized gangs of human smugglers or coyotes. The fence would encourage illegal smuggling and empower organized crime. Especially organized criminals in league with powerful business interests in the United States.
This would further reward the employers of illegal immigrants because the illegal immigrants would be at the mercy of gangsters. Gangsters who could force them to work for low wages.
Nor would the border fence keep out the real bad guys, foreign criminals and terrorists would still be able to get into the country. After all they have the connections and money to get fake IDs or hire smugglers to bring them into the country. The only people stopped by the border fence would be poor folk looking for jobs. Sadly, the border fence would encourage the creation of networks of immigrant smugglers that could serve as a pipeline to ease criminals and terrorists in their transit into the United States.
The border fence then would be a counterproductive waste of our tax money, not a solution to the problem of illegal immigration. So what is the solution to the illegal immigration crisis?
The best solution to the illegal immigration crisis would be to eliminate the demand for illegal immigrants. If people in Latin America knew they couldn’t find work in the USA, they wouldn’t come here.
Poor Latin Americans can find work in the US because there’s no real penalty for employing illegal immigrants. If instead of wasting our tax dollars on the border fence we Americans enforced the laws against employing illegal immigrants we could end the problem.
Suppose we enforced the federal law to seize the assets of the employers of illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants working at Disneyland seize the place and sell it at auction. Or the racketeering laws if Wal-Mart hires a contractor that employees illegal immigrants indict Wal-Mart’s top executives for conspiring to evade federal laws. Take away the business license of any business that employs illegal immigrants. For a change punish the rich white guys in the expensive suits and leave the poor working class Latinos alone.
Of course this would be far cheaper than the border fence. Make an example of a few wealthy businessmen and the market for illegal labor would dry up. The illegal immigrants would stop coming and the problem would go away.
This isn’t going to happen so we’ll still have illegal immigration and the cheap labor it creates a phenomenon that undermines under national economy. Instead of adopting the latest technology, employers hire cheap illegal immigrants and fall behind in the international competition. Japan meanwhile is developing the next generation of robots and automated machines posing that nation on the cutting edge of industrial production.
For the good of our country it’s time to abandon the neat and plausible solution of the border fence and look for real answers. Unfortunately, our political leaders, their pockets stuffed with cash from the employers of illegal immigrants, have no incentive to do that.
*Taken from “Prejudices Second Series, 1920.”

consumer credit

Conservatives and Consumer Credit
By Daniel G. Jennings
One of the great scandals facing America today is consumer credit: credit cards, car loans, college loans, payment options at stores, mortgages etc. Basically the average working or middle class American regardless of employment status, credit history education etc. has access to close to unlimited credit.
The banks, mortgage companies and credit card companies will give average Americans credit cards, car loans, student loans and mortgages of all types regardless of their income and credit history. Working-class Americans know you can be broke with no job or a dead end job with low pay and you can still have a wallet full of credit cards, a car and a house with a mortgage on it. You don’t have to work for this stuff just convince some college drop out who wears a tie and sits in a desk in the lobby of your local bank or the high school drop out who answers the phone at some company that you can make the minimum payment and you can finance it all.
Conservatives should ask themselves is this a real economy or a house of cards? Joe six pack has a new car, a house, and a wallet full of credit cards, sure it looks great but is it real? Or is Joe Six Pack making the minimum payment which convinces some corporate bureaucrat that Joe Six Pack is solvent and can keep making his payments?
We had the same economy back in the 1920s right before the Great Depression. In 1928, Joe Six Pack thought he was doing well because he had lots of credit and a few shares of stock, by 1930 Joe Six Pack, the guy who issued him the credit and the guy who sold him the stock were all standing in the bread line.
So what can conservatives do to prevent another crash of 29 style catastrophe? A great deal only it will be very painful and unpopular. We recently had legal changes which encourage individual responsibility by making bankruptcy harder and requiring people to pay their credit card debt faster.
Why not similar laws enforcing corporate responsibility by making the irresponsible corporations that issued that bad debt take responsibility for it? What about a law that makes it illegal to use the courts and legal recourse to collect credit card debt. In other words make the big corporations that issue all those credit cards rely on the good faith of consumers to pay their bills. The big corporations wouldn’t be able to garnish average citizens’ salaries or take legal action against them. Instead the irresponsible executives who give credit cards to the poor would have to rely on the good faith of the poor to pay their credit card bills.
In other words the irresponsible corporations would have to eat the bad debt they issue. We’d have to go back to the 1950s when banks and big corporations only issued credit cards to those who paid their bills. Average citizens with a history of debt, couldn’t rack up huge credit card debts because nobody would given them credit cards.
That wouldn’t be popular with the irresponsible lenders but it would reduce the level of idiotic consumer spending. Instead of using credit cards to run out and buy everything they want now, consumers would have to budget and save their money. Getting Americans into the habit of budgeting and saving by reducing the amount of consumer credit would force Americans to save for their retirement and a rainy day. We could encourage good behavior on the part of both consumers and lenders in one swoop.
Finally such a movement would reduce mindless consumption, most of which is of cheap imported goods which hurt our industry, increase the trade deficit and make other nations, mostly China, stronger at our expense. Yes, this proposal would be tough medicine but it could help the nation and average citizens.

Stupidity in San Francisco

Stupidity in San Francisco
By Daniel G. Jennings
From the City By the Bay comes a disturbing story of political correctness run amuck - twenty of San Francisco’s police officers have been suspended from their jobs and are being investigated by the local district attorney.
These cops didn’t take bribes, abuse prisoners, beat anybody up or gun down armed citizens. No all they did was to exercise their First Amendment rights by making a video tape that poked fun at themselves, their jobs and their city’s residents. This tape somehow made its way to the Internet where the thin-skinned powers that be in San Francisco’s city administration saw it and took action.
Their objection to the tape: it poked fun at homeless people or rather cops’ indifference to their plight and contained some scenes that observers claimed promoted bigotry against Asians and gays. I haven’t seen the whole tape but the scenes shown on TV news don’t look all that racist or homophobic to me.
What I wonder did these police officers do wrong? It isn’t as if they made a tape promoting the Ku Klux Klan or the Communist Party (oops I suppose that would be alright in San Francisco these days). All they did was make a videotape featuring the kind of humor seen on our television screens 24 hours a day and got busted for it.
Where I wonder are all the left wingers who rushed to that moron Ward Churchill’s defense? Will those defenders of freedom come to the aid of the working class cops whose rights are being trampled? I wouldn’t hold my breath.
This incident is disturbing on two levels, first it shows that the lefties who have taken over many of our city governments have no respect for Free Speech. Or at least the free speech of the working class, arrogant white college professors who make $100,000 a year and pompous movie stars can say whatever they want. Working class cops can forget about free speech.
Worse reality and real people don’t matter to these people. The cops didn’t actually do anything wrong yet they were removed from their jobs which I imagine they’re still being paid for. If San Francisco’s civil service is anything like Denver I imagine the cops are on paid leave. That means they’re off fishing or working at another job to make a little extra income at taxpayers’ expense.
Meanwhile twenty less cops are on the streets of San Francisco which has an increasing murder rate. The real losers are the people of San Francisco including gays and Asians who are now in more danger of crime because fewer cops are on the streets. Does the gay guy who calls 911 when he sees four homophobic thugs coming at him in an alley worry about the cops attitudes towards him. No he just wants to see the guys and gals with the guns and the badges. The same goes for the Asian shop owner faced with an armed robber or gangbangers collecting for a protection racket.
The message this sends to the men and women on the beat is chilling. The people at city hall don’t support you, so don’t take any risks just shut up and follow orders. I bet we’ll see a lot of resignations and retirements among the San Francisco PD in the near future. The department will have a hard time replacing the veteran officers with good recruits and the quality of police work in San Francisco will suffer while incidents of real police abuse and brutality increase.
This affair bears a disturbing similarity to the Abu Ghraib incident in which American military personnel were disciplined and sent to prison. Not because they had actually abused or hurt prisoners but because they took some pictures of prisoners in embarrassing situations. The media made a big deal of that incident even though nobody was actually hurt or killed at Abu Ghraib. The same media ignored real incidents in which American soldiers really hurt and killed prisoners and the numerous atrocities committed by our enemies.
Americans should take note of what it is happening in San Francisco because it shows that the left has become both a threat to our freedoms and to our lives and safety. Hopefully, common sense will takeover and somebody will have the guts to pull the plug on this nonsense. Unfortunately, that’s not likely because common sense is no longer politically correct in America on either side of the political aisle.

Is Education An End In Itself?

Is Education an End in Itself?
By Daniel G. Jennings
Perhaps the worst aspect of our modern American education system is the way in which education has become an end in itself rather than a means to an end.
Too often the goal in our educational system is not to learn something but simply to acquire education. Not because education will improve the students’ mind or life but simply so they will get education.
We see this in the mania to give everybody a college degree whether they need one or not. Or the related drive to send every kid to college to get a degree even if the majority of those people will never use those degrees.
The biggest manifestation of this is in the way we evaluate students through grades. The students who get the best grades and earn the most honors are not those who learn the most but those who do the best job attending school. That is those who conform most to the educational environment get the grades, not those who actually learn.
For example we can take two students at a university, student A takes the easy classes she knows she’ll pass so she’ll get a high grade point average. Student B takes tougher classes he’ll learn more from. The two eventually graduate, Student A has learned less but student A gets the high GPA which helps her get a better job. Student B has learned a lot more but he can’t get a better job even though in actuality he knows more about the subject and is better qualified.
Then there is our university system in which large numbers of students are expending money, time and effort to study subjects which are only of interest to people in the university system. Ethnic studies and women’s studies come to mind here. The only jobs you can get with a major in these subjects are positions teaching those subjects.
In other words we are expending lots of resources to educate individuals in subjects of little or no value. Subjects that are often little more than rehashing of topics covered in other courses like philosophy and history.
What of course can we expect from a university system where a large percentage of the education is designed to educate educators. Not to study the world or its problems or to prepare people for careers and lives in the real world.
Even worse is the fact that fewer resources than ever seem to devoted to teaching people useful items. We now face a shortage of skilled technicians like plumbers, auto mechanics, carpenters etc. because people aren’t being educated in those trades. We also see a shortage of science, mathematics and engineering students in our country. Not to mention a nursing shortage.
Our education system obsessed as it is at handing out grades no longer seems capable of teaching people to do practical things. A frightening development because our machine dependent society desperately needs practical people who can build, repair, maintain and operate the machines that make our civilization possible.
What’s the answer? I don’t know but perhaps we should revaluate our obsession with grades and degrees. Maybe a good start would be diverting money from colleges to technical schools. Another would be to eliminate the scholarship system in which grades are the basis of college financing and replace it with one in which we underwrite the college or tech school education of all who want to go like they have in parts of Europe. That might reduce the prestige of a college education and of grades, but at least make learning and not the mindless acquisition of letters and numbers on paper the goal of our education system.

Hillary

Hillary
By Daniel G. Jennings
I must admit that I am intrigued by Hillary Clinton, the former first lady and junior U.S. Senator from New York State, who could very well be America’s next President.
Not since Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower have we seen a probable presidential candidate with so much popularity and potential appeal. Like Ike, Hillary is well known, admired and well liked by a large segment of the American public.
Hillary is certainly a sympathetic figure, the ambitious and talented young lawyer who sacrificed her career to raise a family, the long-suffering and loving wife who faithfully stood by her lout of a husband for decades and the popular moderate who will reconnect the Democratic Party with the Great American Majority. Or at least that’s the myth there’s quite a bit of truth to the myth of course.
Behind the public image of St. Hillary of Clinton there is a very shrewd and smart political operator who is cleverly taking advantage of the state of American politics to propel herself into the presidency. Or at least make herself the most powerful and influential figure in the Democratic Party.
Hillary is portraying herself as an old fashioned moderate Democratic politician promoting the social programs Americans like and taking the strong hawkish stand on foreign policy that Americans want. A savvy observer of American popular opinion, Hillary knows that average Americans are fed up with the extreme stands taken by politicians of both parties and they want something different. Americans are sick and tired of the Religious Right, the peace movement and politicians like George W. Bush and John Kerry who pander to such groups. She understands that Americans are tired of politicians prattling on endlessly about such issues as abortion and gay marriage and engaging in senseless mudslinging.
By projecting an image of herself as a sensible down to Earth soccer mom Hillary can give Americans an alternative to politics as usual. By taking a strong stand in favor of the war and opposing the peace movement Hillary is catering to Americans’ desire for security. The times are dark and dangerous and Americans are afraid, Hillary knows that and she understands that average Americans want to be protected. She knows that Democrats must recover their hawkish Cold War and World War II stand on national defense and adopt an aggressive America First foreign policy.
But Hillary will have to offer voters more than just the bloody flag. The Republicans can and will do that far better. So she’ll have to offer a 21st Century New Deal a package of social and other domestic programs such as national health care and high speed rail that hold the promise of improving average people’s life. She’ll also have to devise a means of paying for those programs without raising taxes on the Middle Class that’ll be tough.
There are of course many obstacles in Hillary’s way. She’s a U.S. Senator and she’s running from a Northeastern State. No U.S. Senator or Northeasterner has been elected president since JFK in 1960 and he barely won the election. Every elected President since 1964 has run from a Southern or Western state and has either been a governor or former governor, a sitting president, or a vice president. Hillary will have to overcome that fact of history.
She’s also a woman, there is a part of the population that will never vote for a woman. However, there are probably just as many or more people who will vote for her because she is a woman. I imagine the sexism voters will cancel each other out and eliminate that factor from the electoral mix.
An even bigger stumbling block in Hillary’s way may the new nature of American politics. The new forces in American politics are grass roots political organizations linked by new communications technologies such as the Internet. These groups have proven more potent than Twentieth Century political factors such as big media, campaign consultants and advertising. Media savvy candidates who have relied upon them have come up short, sometimes very short. So it’s quite probable that these groups especially the Religious Right or the Peace Movement or an unholy alliance of both could derail Hillary’s campaign.
Yet even if Hillary could win, she might not be a very effective president. Like another popular celebrity politician who tried to steer a moderate course and stand up to special interests, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hillary could find herself isolated and unpopular. Arnold rode into Sacramento on a tide of high hopes, and promises of reform. His ship of state soon ran aground on a reef of special interests, media attacks and popular indifference.
Can even a popular, influential and savvy political operator govern effectively in today’s climate of extreme partisanship, blogging, special interests and fragmented media? I don’t know, I’m not sure even FDR or Ronald Reagan could have succeeded in today’s political climate. So what chance does Hillary stand, sure she can wow the crowds on Oprah and in Wal-Mart parking lots. But it won’t help her get legislation through Congress or impress the bloggers and special interests.
Where this will lead, I don’t know but I have a feeling that Hillary is going to find out whether she wants to or not.