president elect

Why Good Men Don’t Become President Anymore

by Ryan Young on January 20, 2009

in Odds & Ends, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

President-elect Obama became President Obama today. It is worth taking a minute to reflect on the nature of his office.  Exactly what has he gotten himself into?

Good men rarely become president. Good people don’t even want to be president. Once in a while, one slips through the cracks. George Washington. Abraham Lincoln. Grover Cleveland (not kidding). Maybe Barack Obama will be added to that list some day. It’s too early to tell.

I have some doubts. Here’s why: becoming president requires years of campaigning and fundraising, handshaking and deal-making — no one can possibly endure the modern campaign unless they thirst for power to their very core.

Campaigning for even minor office requires months of the candidate prostrating himself before people he’s never met. Making grand promises he couldn’t possibly keep. The things that must do to his mind. Especially if he starts buying his own hype.

Our candidate must hide his true beliefs. He has to tailor his opinions to match the median voter’s. He dares not follow his own heart or mind. He’d lose for sure.

Good people carry themselves with pride and dignity. The man or woman who voluntarily embarks on the modern campaign has neither.

And the media coverage. The spotlight so bright that it burns. Unkempt reporters always scurrying underfoot. Never a moment to yourself on the campaign trail.

Worse, the strain it puts on your family. Long weeks of separation. Unflattering exposés, revealing your relatives’ personal lives for millions to see.

Good people do not do that to their families.

Nor do good people seek power over other human beings. Morality in politics is that of Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic; might makes right. No parent would teach that to their child. It is wrong.

Yet it is the morality that men must follow to become president.

Politicians are terrible little creatures. May our children aspire to better things than the presidency.

Stimulating Who, Exactly?

by Iain Murray on January 13, 2009

in Environment, Stimulus to Nowhere

Great point by Carter Wood over at the excellent Shopfloor blog of the National Association of Manufacturers. Building on my point at NRO about the tension between infrastructure projects and existing regulation, Carter says:

There is good reason to fear that any significant project that promotes both quick economic investment and long-term competitiveness — say, modernizing and expanding the nation’s electrical grid — will immediately be hit by litigation lasting years and years and years. In which case the only thing being stimulated is the fundraising drives of alarmist, anti-growth environmental groups.

The plain fact is that any so-called stimulus that relies on infrastructure projects has to contain a significant deregulatory element. Of course, environmental groups will be able to raise money whatever happens, whether because “polluting” projects are given the go-ahead or because regulations they have fought tooth-and-nail for are lifted. It should be apparent, therefore, that if the President-elect wants to avoid conflict with environmental groups that he has so far rewarded with at least 5 major appointments, he should choose another route for the stimulus than the Keynesian infrastructure route, such as individual and corporate tax cuts. In the end, however, if he wants infrastructure improvement – whether initiated by government or the private sector – deregulation is almost a necessary price to pay.

Or he could attempt to live with government funding and regulatory delay, and hope the taxpayer will be willing – and able – to bear the cost…

Stimulating Alternative Energy

by Iain Murray on January 9, 2009 · 4 comments

in Environment, Global Warming, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere

In his speech on the stimulus package Thursday, President (Elect) Obama promised to double alternative energy use in three years. How likely is this?

Well, for a start we don’t use much alternative energy to begin with – slightly less than 7 quadrillion BTU of the 101 quads we use as a nation annually. Of those 7, 2 quads are related to the use of wood as fuel, something which is not normally viewed as environmentally friendly, and 2.5 are hydropower, an energy source once thought as environmentally friendly but now usually opposed as destructive. Of the remaining 2.5 quads, biofuels provide about 1 quad, and biofuels have become increasingly controversial and opposed – rightly – by many green environmental groups (source for these figures here).

So the more “acceptable” forms of renewable energy – “waste” biomass, geothermal, wind and solar – only provide just over 1 quad between them. Wind provides 319 trillion BTU and solar just 80. If these two forms of renewable energy are going to form the basis of Obama’s promise, the increase in scale needed to provide 7 quads between them in three years is simply inconceivable. A seventeenfold increase in these forms of energy would be a vast achievement, and one that would surely be trailed in the speech. It would presumably also require at least a seventeenfold increase in subsidies ($740 million in 2007 – see Table ES5 here) to about $13 billion annually, about the same as the Detroit bailout.

It seems likely, therefore, that, while there will be some wind and solar investment, perhaps some significant amounts, to meet a target of an extra 7 quads of energy, the only feasible source that is scalable to the intense required will be biofuels, but even that will require a massive expansion, and one that will have significant implications for crop prices, food prices and land use. The consequences may prove unacceptable to all but the agribusiness lobby and farm state politicians.

So it seems likely that the target of doubling the use of renewable energy does not actually refer to the full range of renewables at all, but just to those “acceptable” alternatives. This would imply that the target is only 1 extra quad of renewable energy by 2011, which, while it would represent a significant expansion of those industries, would amount to just a “drop in the bucket” of total US energy use. And, as we hear in the debate over ANWR every time it comes up, a “drop in the bucket” is just not worth doing…

It appears that this part of the stimulus package is, at most, a shibboleth.

Let the Sunstein In

by Iain Murray on January 8, 2009 · 1 comment

in Environment, Regulation

I was cheered this morning by the news that Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago is to be the next head of OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. While not someone a libertarian conservative would necessarily appoint, he is possibly the best choice possible that Obama could have made, and his friendship with the President-elect suggests he will have some power. In particular, Prof. Sunstein has been a very strong opponent of the Precautionary Principle, which is the rock upon which many environmental regulatory initiatives are built. He also called CEI’s litigation to draw attention to the fatal consequences of CAFE regulation “the principal case involving the issue of health-health tradeoffs.”

Todd Zywicki and Glenn Reynolds also applaud the appointment.

Last-minute push for Colombia trade pact

by Fran Smith on November 12, 2008

in International, Trade

Major newspapers around the country including the Washington Post, the LA Times, and the Wall Street Journal are urging President-elect Barack Obama to pass the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement in the lame duck session. The Los Angeles Times said it bluntly, “It’s time to stop playing games with a trade pact whose economic and political benefits are good for both nations.”

Some reports of the meeting between the president-elect and President Bush said that the president had pushed for the trade agreement in exchange for support of the auto loan package, but that was denied.

CEI has strongly supported the passage of this agreement based on its own merits — it provides surety for continued liberalized trade for Colombia, it opens up Colombian markets to U.S. goods without high tariffs, and it helps cement the close relationship with a Latin American ally besieged by leftist neighboring governments.