What Has Debating Skills Got to Do with Being President

The news coming out of Iowa is more and more a disconnect - a disconnect from the problem at hand, which is to begin the formal process of choosing the Republican candidate to face Barak Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

For what seems like an eternity, we have been witness to debates, polls, media pundits telling us about the latest candidate error or blip in the polls, or why one or another of the GOP candidates will not or cannot be either nominated or elected.

And, with two weeks to go before the good folks of Iowa form their caucuses and select the GOP candidate they want to support in the formal nominating process that ends with the Republican Convention where each delegate casts one vote for someone - two weeks ! - we are still reading about

-         why Newt is falling in the polls and doesn’t have the time or money or staff to do anything to rise again,

-         why Romney cannot seem to get more than 25% of the polls,

-         why Santorum and Bachmann have already fallen out of contention unless a underground swell from social Christians lifts the up in the caucus decision-making,

-         why Ron Paul is dangerous in the primaries but unelectable,

-         why Huntsman has bet his candidacy on new Hampshire and it will backfire on him if somebody comes out of Iowa with a big win,

-         why Perry is mounting in the polls again but has too little time left to win in Iowa

--Why, why, why.

We are now even hearing from professionals that the GOP Convention may end up being brokered because no-one will come out of the primary season with enough votes to be nominated on the first ballot.

And while all the to-ing and fro-ing is playing out daily in the papers, over the net and on TV, we hear again and again that almost anyone can beat President Obama, who seems destined to be a one-term president.

But, we are reminded, Obama is dangerous because he is a good, maybe a great debater, and so the GOP needs to nominate a great debater to beat him.

I think Americans are being driven to a sort of collective hysteria about all this.

It doesn’t matter who is nominated, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, whose libertarian views could do real international damage if unchecked.

The people who are GOP candidates are articulate, informed about the issues, sensitive to the mood of voters, eager to stop the train wreck now plowing through Congress, and generally able to debate.

As a parenthesis, I would like to ask, humbly of course, who decided that Obama is a great debater. Hillary Clinton out-worded him often in 2008. He stumbles for words when he is not scripted, and his delivery is more that of a second-rate huckster than a President of the United States.

Back to the point - Reagan was a great debater. JFK was a great debater. There were no presidential debates before the JFK-Nixon debates, except for the Lincoln-Douglass debates. So, we’ve elected approximately 40 presidents without worrying at all about their debating skills.

If I had to vote based on debate skills, I’d go with - Perry because he’s like Reagan. Or Newt because he knows the answers cold. Or Romney because he’s cool under pressure.

There you have it. All three are solid, time and job tested, conservative Republicans whose ideas are neither scary right nor scary left.

Who will it be, then, that we send to the White House on January 20, 2013?

Maybe we ought to kick back, watch the million football bowl games now running nightly, and let the American people decide. They’ve done a pretty good job for a couple of centuries now- -maybe, just maybe, they’ll get it right this time, too.

Vaclav Havel, a Man of Peace and a Fighter for Liberty

In the generation of political leaders following World War II, none stand out more than Vaclav Havel, the former freedom fighter and dissident who pushed forward at the right moment the civil disobedience movement against the Soviet regime in eastern Europe. His 1989 Velvet Revolution in Prague opened the way for the destruction of the Iron Curtain and freed eastern European countries held in the Soviet grip since WWII.

Havel, a former Czech president and man of letters, died Saturday at the age of 75. He was hailed by world leaders as a hero of liberty and democracy, and a pioneer in the reunification of Europe.

“Europe owes a profound debt to Vaclav Havel, who devoted his life to the cause of human liberty,” said British Prime Minister David Cameron. “During long years, the communists tried to defeat him and silence his voice, but he would not be reduced to silence.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that “he was a great European and his fight for liberty and democracy was as unforgettable as his great humanity. We Germans are particularly indebted to him,” she added, referring to the demolition of the Berlin Wall that led to the reunification of Germany.

“With the passing of Vaclav Havel, the Czech Republic has lost a great patriot, France has lost a friend, and Europe has lost one of its wise men,” said French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Lech Walesa, former Polish president and himself a freedom fighter during the Soviet grip on eastern Europe, said, “Europe will miss him enormously. He was a great voice for liberty, democracy and for freeing Europe from the Soviet juggernaut.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu said, “Havel was a strong and courageous voice against totalitarianism and an inspiration for dissidents everywhere who are fighting for peace. He was a true friend of Israel.”

Dear readers, let us remember Vaclav Havel in our prayers and thoughts.

Let us remember that he was brave enough to be the voice of freedom when others were silent.

Let us remember that all great movements for human dignity and liberty begin with just one voice and that we were privileged to have Vaclav Havel among us when he was needed most.     

May we who remain be worthy of his legacy.

Rest in Peace.

Egypt Still Cannot Get It Right after Its Revolution

Friday, the Egyptian military tried to clean out a protesters’ camp in Cairo, which ended with more than 300 injured and 8 people dead.

The protesters threw fire bombs and the military fired live ammunition into the crowd. Doctors reported at least 7 gunshot injuries.

The worst confrontations took place around the street leading to the cabinet building, which was on fire for a time.

The military council said in a statement late Friday that soldiers were acting in self-defense against protesters who shot at them and lobbed rocks and Molotov cocktails. It did not explain the deaths of protesters or the injuries attributed to gunfire and blamed the media for stoking the unrest.

Military police appeared to try to disperse the crowd, burning tents of protesters who had been there for 3 weeks in a bid to stop the caretaker government from convening, witnesses said, and soldiers atop nearby government buildings threw rocks and glass at the crowd below.

By late Friday morning, military police in riot gear had rushed into Qasr el-Aini Street, beating protesters with nightsticks. A young woman trying to stop them from hitting a fellow protester and was beaten to the ground by several military police officers, who then detained her. At least six women were among the scores of protesters who were detained and later released, many bleeding and reeling from what they said were shocks from cattle prods.

Also among the dead was Sheik Emad Effat, a cleric from al-Azhar, Egypt’s preeminent religious institution, MENA reported.

Some expressed fears that the next round of parliamentary elections could be jeopardized. The violence comes a day after election judges said they were beaten by military police outside polling stations they were to supervise Thursday and some threatened to boycott the third round of voting, according to local news reports.

Outside the cabinet building, families begged the military to release their relatives.

“The people want the execution of the field marshal,” protesters chanted, referring to Egypt’s top general, Mohammed Hussein Tantawi.

Nearby, young men siphoned gas from cars to make firebombs.

Mohamed El Baradei, a Nobel Peace Laureate and presidential candidate popular among youthful protesters, wrote on his Facebook page, “Even if the sit-in was not legal, should it be dispersed with such brutality and barbarity?”

According to the Washington Post, early exit polls show that the Muslim Brotherhood and extreme right parties are doing even better than they did in the first rounds, with the moderates who began the revolution slipping in the results.

In the aftermath, 2 members of the new military-led advisory council, formed to smooth the transition to an elected parliament and help with writing the new constitution, resigned and apologized for joining in the first place.

Later, the advisory council said at a news conference that it had urged the military council to end the violence against protesters, open an investigation, apologize to the injured, compensate bereaved families and release all those detained. It said all its members would resign if its recommendations were not met.

The protesters are trying to prevent the military from continuing to control Egypt and are angry that the elections appear to be permitting the Islamist factions to gain power in parliament.

So, if Tunisia is the laboratory for the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Egypt has a lot to learn from it.

The Latest Eurozone Ploy Is to Attack Britain while Fitch Tells the Hard Truths

Credit rating agency Fitch announced on Friday that it thinks the Eurozone cannot produce a comprehensive solution to its debt crisis, that is, that a solution is beyond reach. Fitch then put several Eurozone economies, including France and Italy, on watch for potential downgrades.

It reaffirmed France's top-notch triple-A rating but said the outlook is now negative over a longer term. In response to the negative watch, the French Finance Minister lashed out at Great Britain, saying its credit rating deserves to be lowered before France’s. This, at least, is a comic response to the Eurozone fiscal crisis - play musical chairs and guess who will be the last man standing. It is hard to believe that the normally very logical French actually believe that rock-throwing at Britain will help them keep their Triple A rating, but then these are perilous and uncharted times. And, the fact that Britain managed to keep itself out of the Eurozone must grate hard on France, whose citizens approved the pact by the smallest of margins and are now undoubtedly wondering if they made a mistake.

Meanwhile, the new Italian prime minister took a side swipe at Germany in saying the Eurozone leadership should not to create divisions in Europe by imposing too strict austerity measures in too tight time frames. That, at least, is a constructive comment because much of the past month has seen the Eurozone debtor nations hit by increasing shrinkage in their economies (Italy 5.5% and Ireland 1.9%) at a time when the only way to save their countries from sovereign default is to grow their economies enough to pay for the bailout loan packages foisted on them by the Eurozone leadership.  

German Chancellor Merkel, under pressure from her revered German Bundesbank to force debt-saddled euro zone countries to reform and ‘save’ their way out of crisis with austerity measures, has led a push for automatic sanctions for deficit "sinners" in the Eurozone.

This has fed concerns that excessive belt-tightening in southern countries could send their economies into a negative spiral with no prospect of growing out of the crisis, while feeding resentment in the prosperous north.
Fitch said that following the EU summit a week ago it concluded that "a 'comprehensive solution' to the Eurozone crisis is technically and politically beyond reach.

"Of particular concern is the absence of a credible financial backstop. In Fitch's opinion this requires more active and explicit commitment from the European Central Bank to mitigate the risk of self-fulfilling liquidity crises for potentially illiquid but solvent Euro Area Member States," Fitch said.

Fitch put Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, Italy, Ireland, and Cyprus on negative watch.

Standard & Poor's, another rating agency, had already warned 15 of the currency bloc's 17 members they were close to a downgrade.

A first draft of a planned fiscal union treaty among Eurozone countries and countries wanting to join the Eurozone (I cannot explain this, except perhaps to say that lemmings love to drown themselves in groups), published on Friday, showed that countries could be taken to the European Court of Justice if they fail to meet agreed budget targets. Immediately, Hungary and the Czech Republic took exception to this control mechanism.
So, we see that the Eurozone is almost as divided and unwilling to compromise as are the Democrats in the US Senate and the Republicans in the US House of Representatives.

The difference today is that the Americans buried the hatchet long enough to adopt a budget continuing resolution to get the United States through to the end of the current fiscal year and also approved a military budget.

But, in the Eurozone, the only movement seemed to come in negative chunks of self-serving, even if true, statements meant to drive the proposed Eurozone solution to its financial crisis to its lowest common denominator, which would be to do nothing - except attack Great Britain for not being part of the horrible mess Europe has got itself into.

That is why the Fitch statement that that "a 'comprehensive solution' to the Eurozone crisis is technically and politically beyond reach…” was simply the most effective way to tell Europe that it is far from solving its problems and that the future looks bleak indeed, for both Europe and the Euro as a currency.