Elections Have Consquences
“Who is responsible for Hagel’s nomination? The American people, really,” Jay Nordlinger writes:
They chose Obama over Mitt Romney on November 6. Elections have consequences. Hagel reflects Obama’s thinking, particularly on the Middle East. Romney would have named a much, much different secretary of defense.
In a democracy, people get what they deserve (I never tire of saying). At least the majority does. Hagel is the kind of defense secretary the American people asked for, when they reelected Obama.
They could block him, if they wanted — by flooding their senators with letters and phone calls, crying out against Hagel. But they won’t.
Maybe they’ll choose more wisely, next time they have a chance . . .
You know who else might choose more wisely next time? David Brooks, who, as Peter Robinson paraphrases in his headline at Ricochet, describes Hagel as “Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Decline.” Brooks writes:
In a democracy, voters get what they want, so the line tracing federal health care spending looks like the slope of a jet taking off from LaGuardia*. Medicare spending is set to nearly double over the next decade. This is the crucial element driving all federal spending over the next few decades and pushing federal debt to about 250 percent of G.D.P. in 30 years….
Oswald Spengler didn’t get much right, but he was certainly correct when he told European leaders that they could either be global military powers or pay for their welfare states, but they couldn’t do both.
Europeans, who are ahead of us in confronting that decision, have chosen welfare over global power. European nations can no longer perform many elemental tasks of moving troops and fighting. As late as the 1990s, Europeans were still spending 2.5 percent of G.D.P. on defense. Now that spending is closer to 1.5 percent, and, amid European malaise, it is bound to sink further.
The United States will undergo a similar process. The current budget calls for a steep but possibly appropriate decline in defense spending, from 4.3 percent of G.D.P. to 3 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office….
Chuck Hagel has been nominated to supervise the beginning of this generation-long process of defense cutbacks. If a Democratic president is going to slash defense, he probably wants a Republican at the Pentagon to give him political cover, and he probably wants a decorated war hero to boot….
How, in short, will Hagel supervise the beginning of America’s military decline?
No, I’d say our chattering classes supervised that in the mid-naughts, when they chose aesthetics over substance. (See also: Brooks, David.)
Brooks’ response to Hagel’s nomination also brings to mind something Mark Steyn wrote in his “It’s the Demography, Stupid” opus from the start of 2006:
Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the western world will survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands— probably—just as in Istanbul there’s still a building called St. Sophia’s Cathedral. But it’s not a cathedral; it’s merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the west.
One obstacle to doing that is the fact that, in the typical election campaign in your advanced industrial democracy, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much all parties in the rest of the west are largely about what one would call the secondary impulses of society—government health care, government day care (which Canada’s thinking of introducing), government paternity leave (which Britain’s just introduced). We’ve prioritized the secondary impulse over the primary ones: national defense, family, faith, and, most basic of all, reproductive activity—“Go forth and multiply,” because if you don’t you won’t be able to afford all those secondary-impulse issues, like cradle-to-grave welfare. Americans sometimes don’t understand how far gone most of the rest of the developed world is down this path: In the Canadian and most Continental cabinets, the defense ministry is somewhere an ambitious politician passes through on his way up to important jobs like the health department. I don’t think Don Rumsfeld would regard it as a promotion if he were moved to Health & Human Services.
I bet Hagel would. I know Obama would.
* So does America’s post-Great Society inflation rate. I’m sure it’s merely a coincidence.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
I’m sick of hearing that Obama is “just crazy enough to _______” therefore we must concede to him.
The Democrats lost the most democratic body in the last two elections. I don’t care that the Democrats in the glory days of 2010 passed Obamacare in the House by a few votes. By postponing its major enactments until 2014, later House sessions — turning over every two years — have the right to change course.
Demand it. Insist on it, and more. House Republicans, enact your program. Ryan entitlement reforms. Cut taxes a little, slash spending a lot across the Board. End the EPA’s jurisdiction over CO2 and fracking. All of it. Authorize additional debt for this program, but none other.
Then just walk away. You’ve done your constitutional duty.
Crazy? Well maybe what’s needed now, to save the country, is a little bit of crazy.
“democracy” is mostly corrupt “elections” and are portrayed as “elections” until at some point the corrupt “elections” no longer represent enough of the citizens and dissolution or revolution results.
Still the references to our “democracy”. How I long for a return to a constittional republicwhere minorities have rights.
same here. people forget we are not a democracy. another misnomer from our schools
This post is titled Elections Have Consequences. Linking, Instapundit writes Yeah, but that’s not an excuse for giving up.
Yeah, but not giving up is no excuse for repeating the same behavior and expecting different results.
Which is exactly what Karl “Permanent Republican Majority” Rove and his fellow overpaid, underperforming professionals would have us do.
We’re getting the politicians we deserve. This is punishment from God on America for our sin and unfaithfulness. Prove me wrong.
“Maybe they’ll choose more wisely, next time they have a chance . . .”
Terrible that the US has shrunken to an elected monarchy, but after FDR I (the Internist), that’s to be expected.
Actions have consequences. The problem is that the Obama administration is acting under the cover of media lies and misdirection. The people most hurt by Obama’s actions will be the ignoramus’ who voted for him. We, who didn’t, will take evasive action.
Consequences are coming which Obama can neither finesse nor deflect. Reality can be put off, but not forever. Not all crises can be spun in a leftist direction.
Where is the light at the end of the tunnel? The Media would delude you that we are not in a tunnel. If America is in economic recovery then Obama can pursue side issues like gun control. He can send out Biden to pretend that the Second Amendment can be over ridden by his Executive Orders. His EPA can shut down coal mines and coal fired power plants; it can attempt to regulate rain water runoff. His agencies can engage in regulatory over reach, until enough people get wise.
When will the public get pissed? He is betting that Americans have no spine, because some of us do not.
Stupidity has consequences too. The priority for Republican politicians in Washington was making Obama a one term president. They essentially refused to govern. The American people recognized that fact and punished them for it. All the whining, the threats of revolution, the complaining about the unfairness of it all, won’t change the basic math. Republicans elected candidates that accurately reflected the impulses of their base and most of America decided to not indulge the insane wing of the conservative movement. In every contested election, Republicans lost. They lost not because people were in love with the Democrat. They lost because people have a visceral dislike for the Republican agenda. A little self-reflection would usually follow such a resounding defeat but most of you will have none that. Your solution is to double down on the stupidity. Here’s a little exercise to consider. For all the real and imagined problems we face, what did the 113th House propose out of the gate? A bill to repeal Obamacare, a bill to remove birth right citizenship and the personhood amendment. Why? Not even the wackiest of wingnuts expects any of these to go anywhere. They appeal to a small yet increasingly insane portion of the overall electorate, the Republican base. It’s time the grown ups in the Republican party realize what the rest of the country already knows. The base is nuts. It’s time for a new base. One that is a lot less crazy and a little more moderate.