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February 13, 2012
Binyamin Rose: Back to the Bunker: How a life-risking act by a Christian family during the Holocaust saved a family and built a thriving community a world away
Menachem Wecker: Business Schools Teach Real Estate Despite Troubled Housing Market
February 10, 2012
Lisa M. Krieger: Man with defibrillator demands access to his own heart's information
David G. Savage: Why activists may not be in a hurry to have High Court rule on alternative marriage
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Laura McMullen: 10 Least Expensive Public Schools for Out-of-State Students
Kimberly Palmer: How to actually enjoy -- relaxing, financially -- your vacation
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Warren Richey: Why momentous Prop. 8 ruling might not satisfy gay-rights groups
Menachem Wecker: Though Controversial, LL.M.'s Can Lead to Specialized Legal Jobs
The Kosher Gourmet byDana Velden: Going to the bother of making soup? You know it better be good. This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets)
February 7, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Caught off-guard? President's Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer gives those who need a reason not to vote for him, a darn good one
Suzanne Bohan: Leaping lizards! Tiny reptiles advancing robot design
February 6, 2012
Jonathan Tobin: Iran Threatens Israel With Destruction, But the New York Times Doesn't Hear It
Jeffrey Fleishman: In newly democratic Egypt, tens of democracy activists jailed, to stand trial; their groups are 'threatening the stability of the homeland'
Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
Caroline B. Glick: Obama: Of course I intend to prevent a nuclear holocaust . . . in a few months
Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
Jeannine Stein: An inflated ego and thinking you're 'all that' doesn't just make others sick of you, it can make you ill
Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
Jordan Rau: In quest to grow, Catholic hospital system will announce this morning its break from church
Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
David G. Savage: They sued their principals after slandering them online --- now the cases are headed to the Supreme Court
David Francis: Where to Invest in 2012: With stocks expected to rebound, opportunity abounds for investors
January 13, 2012
Ben Lynfield: Israeli lawmakers move to annex Jewish Judea, one museum at a time
Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz: Thriving through touch: Gentle massage helps older people with low mobility improve in mind and body
January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
Warren Richey: Supreme Court says no to new rule on eyewitness testimony
John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
The Kosher Gourmet by Joseph Erdos: This mushroom and barley soup has an intense -- almost nutty -- flavor that mixes robust with Middle East. It has creaminess without cream
January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
August 25, 2009
/5 Elul 5769
Losing Touch: the President and the People
By
Paul Greenberg
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It's nothing new for president and people to drift apart. Any more than there's anything remarkable about the ebb and flow of fickle American public opinion in general. It can swing from left to right and back again with the regularity of a metronome. What impresses about this latest shift, which is easier to feel than to measure in the polls, is the speed with which it is occurring. This president hasn't been in office a year yet he seems to grow ever more distant.
Why is that? Maybe it's because he began at such a high point in public esteem, and with such a reservoir of good will even among many who might not have voted for him. So the least decline in his popularity appears great. Maybe it's because of the unrealistic, even messianic, hopes he raised during his campaign, and then during his triumphal pre-inaugural tours and the glittering beginnings of his presidency. He had nowhere to go but down after that. The contrast between those heady days and the grime that must come with having to deal with the real world is all the more striking in this president's case.
It all has a familiar feeling, unfortunately. Anyone with a memory for these things will recall Jimmy Carter's progression from bright hope to utter disappointment in those ghastly '70s. In keeping with the pace of technological innovation since the Carter Years, the whole sad process has been speeded up considerably these days.
How explain the quicksilver change in the public mood? Is it because this president has tried to do so much, or because he has tried to do it so vaguely? Whatever the reason, there is no palpable sense of satisfaction about whatever it is he's doing these days, which remains uncertain.
There is still a vast well of sympathy out there for the new president, but a president needs more than sympathy. Mr. Carter had sympathy, at least before he became as unsatisfactory an ex-president as he had been a president. Herbert Hoover had sympathy, at least after a few decades and a generation had passed, and the passage of time had softened memories of the Great Depression he presided over. (Time may not heal, but it does tend to cover the scars.)
Why the feeling now that we stand at the beginning of another president's estrangement from the nation that had just rallied around him? The shibboleths of his presidential campaign Hope! Change! Audacity! seem almost forgotten now except for purposes of irony.
It's not just the downtick in the polls that sets off this feeling; polls should mean little to a president of principle. There's something more involved here than the usual vagaries of fortune charted by the pollsters and pulse-takers of the chattering classes.
This administration's big problem is that a sense of proportion is returning to American politics after a financial panic that many, including the president, seemed to confuse with the coming of another Great Depression, or at least with a chance to enact changes as sweeping as another New Deal. Maybe on his chief of staff's theory that no crisis should ever be wasted.
Think of the opportunity a great crisis presents for social engineering, but this crisis may already be waning, and the people are waking up. They may no longer be as willing to write their new president a blank check. As panic fades, so does the desperation that leads people to hand over power to a new leader with new plans. Big plans.
The big thinkers in the White House may have thought they were back in the utter depths of 1932. But the crisis they had to deal with was more like the Panic of 1907, when the country had a J. P. Morgan instead of a Federal Reserve to deal with such things. Back then one man, if he were the right man, could step in and re-finance and re-organize the banks and investment houses. And do a much better job of it than today's Fed and Treasury Department combined. Only afterward, when the crisis had been weathered, would J. Pierpont Morgan be rewarded with the fear, suspicion, envy and hatred of his countrymen.
As last year's crisis starts to fade, the people begin to ask why their government had to go beyond just stabilizing the system and start socializing it. See the transmogrification of General Motors into Government Motors while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the twin roots of the housing crash that caused the crisis, begin to swell once again. Both should have gone the way of Lehman Brothers and been sold off, not expanded.
A huge stimulus package doesn't seem to have stimulated much except the appetite of politicians. Now we are to get a Rube Goldberg cap-and-trade system that nobody seems to understand; thousand-page bills are passed before they're read or maybe even completely written.
A whole new public health-care system is now being debated without ever having been spelled out, so its features seem to change every day with every growing objection. There may be something worse than having a president who is merely wrong, and that's having one who seems lost.
The letdown with this president may go deeper than disagreements over specific programs. It has to do with a developing gap between president and people. Barack Obama is one of the great explainers of the world, always lecturing to us down here on the ground, confident that all he has to do is educate us and we can all be as enlightened as he. But he seems to think it only a one-way transaction, and he's beginning to lose the knack for hiding his condescension.
A president rooted in the people, whose fortunes rise and fall with the people's, may be down for a time along with the nation's fortunes, but being one with the people, his standing will rise with its returning hopes. But a president who gazes on popular opinion from afar, like an outside analyst, and who practices politics with the air of a surgeon operating on a patient, cannot forever pretend he is just doing the people's will as he does his own.
Soon enough the patient emerges from the anesthetic, looks around, and wants to know will demand to know what's been happening to him while he was under. And when the answers are confusing, vague, evasive, not fully formed or uninformed, that is, no answers at all, our patient will begin to doubt the wisdom of this physician who had once seemed to know all.
Once upon a time a president named Jimmy Carter sensed the country's loss of faith in his leadership and confused it with a loss of faith in itself. But it wasn't America that was suffering from a generalized malaise during the Carter Years, but only his administration. That president had lost touch with an America that was as much in love with liberty and opportunity as it had ever been. But it was saddled with a leader who felt he needed to manage its decline and limit its ambitions.
When the country rejected Jimmy Carter, it wasn't turning its back on a bright new future but the opposite: government-guaranteed mediocrity. America's vitality was coming back, and along with it, the country's confidence in itself. Yet it had a president who was still treating it as an invalid, one who had lost touch with its common sense, with its hope and optimism, with the vibrant spirit at the heart of his country. Sound familiar?
Paul Greenberg Archives
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