Barack Obama has proven extremely lucky in his past political competition.
In his 2004 race for United States Senator from Illinois, a scandal forced his chief opponent. Jack Ryan, to withdraw from the race.
In his 2008 race for President, his opponent, Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain, chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Her laughable ignorance persuaded millions of voters they didn’t want her “a heartbeat away” from the Presidency.
Four years later, on August 11, 2012, Mitt Romney, the expected Republican nominee for President, gave Obama another unexpected gift: He chose Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice presidential nominee.
Paul Ryan
In 2011, as Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ryan released “The Path to Prosperity,” a 2012 budget resolution that he claimed would end “uncontrolled government spending” and “crushing levels of taxes.”
According to economist and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich:
“More than any other politician today, Paul Ryan exemplifies the social Darwinism at the core of today’s Republican Party: Reward the rich, penalize the poor, let everyone else fend for themselves. Dog eat dog.”
On March 12, 2012, details of Ryan’s 2013 House Budget Committee proposal were released. Among these:
- Repeal the Affordable Health Care Act of 2010.
- Turn Medicare into a private health insurance system.
- Slash funding for Medicaid, which ensures medical care for the poor, forcing states to drop coverage for 14 to 28 million low-income people, according to the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
- Reduce food stamps for poor families by 17%–$135 billion–over the decade, leading to a significant increase in hunger, especially among children.
In addition, his “H.R. 212: Sanctity of Human Life Act” would give fetuses full personhood rights from the moment of fertilization.
This would:
- Outlaw abortion even in cases of rape and incest; and
- Ban certain methods of birth control, such as IUDs and spermicides.
Unsurprisingly, Obama found it easy to turn Ryan’s Right-wing extremism against him–and Romney.
Fast forward to 2904–and the mid-term Congressional elections.
The 2010 mid-terms had given control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans. For Obama and Democrats generally, it was vitally important that their party retain control of the Senate.
But throughout 2014, a series of unexpected problems arose to plague the Obama administration.
Among these:
- Tens of thousands of women and children flooded into the United States from Central America. Many of the children came unaccompanied by their parents.
- The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) started blitzing Iraq, routing the American-trained Iraqi army.
- The Secret Service allowed a White House fence jumper to penetrate the East Room through an unlocked door. Luckily, Obama and his family had just left for Camp David.
- Unknown to the Secret Service, an armed–and several times arrested–security guard rode in the same elevator as President Barack Obama.
- An Ebola-infected man flew from Liberia to Dallas to visit family. Admitted to a hospital, he died on October 8–after infecting two nurses, making them the first American victims of this deadly disease.
None of these actions was Obama’s fault:
- The flood of illegal alien children resulted from a change in legislation during the Presidency of George W. Bush.
- ISIS would have tried to establish an Islamic empire no matter who was President.
- The series of foul-ups at the Secret Service were a product of longstanding neglect within the agency.
- The series of foul-ups at the Dallas hospital were entirely a local matter, beyond the control of the White House.
Still, taken together, they convinced millions of Americans that the Federal Government was too inept or corrupt to efficiently address domestic and foreign crises.
Fortune had turned for–and on–Obama.
As Niccolo Machiavelli explained in The Prince:
If it happens that time and circumstances are favorable to one who acts with caution and prudence he will be successful. But if time and circumstances change he will be ruined, because he does not change the mode of his procedure.
No man can be found so prudent as to be able to adopt himself to this, either because he cannot deviate from that to which his nature disposes him. Or else because having always prospered by walking in one path, he cannot persuade himself that it is well to leave it.
And therefore the cautious man, when it is time to act suddenly, does not know how to do so and is consequently ruined.
Another reason for Obama’s change in fortune: Given to making inspiring speeches, he has proven consistently timid in advancing his agenda.
As Machiavelli puts it:
I certainly think that it is better to be impetuous than cautious. For fortune is a woman, and it is necessary, if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force.
And it can be seen that she lets herself be overcome by the bold, rather than by those who proceed coldly. And therefore, like a woman, she is always a friend to the young, who are less cautious, fiercer, and master her with greater audacity.
With little more than two years left in office, Obama must act decisively–and ruthlessly–if he is to secure a legacy beyond being America’s first black President.
Whether he can bring himself to do so is entirely another matter.
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BE FEARED, NOT DESPISED
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on November 26, 2014 at 12:02 amScreaming “Allah akbar!”–the Islamic battlecry, “God is Great!”–two Palestinians wielding meat cleavers and a gun slaughtered five worshippers in a Jerusalem synagogue.
Three of the dead were Americans holding Israeli citizenship. Four of them were rabbis.
Eight people were injured—and one later died—before the attackers were killed in a shootout with police.
Aftermath of the attack on unarmed rabbis in a Jerusalem synagogue
The attack—launched on November 18—was the deadliest in Israel’s capital since 2008, when a Palestinian gunman shot eight people in a religious seminary school.
And how did Palestinians react to the grisly murders of five unarmed worshippers?
They celebrated:
Palestinians celebrating the attack
And how have Israelis responded to this latest atrocity?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the demolitions of the homes of the attackers.
The blunt truth is that Palestinians have no interest in preventing such attacks on Israeli citizens—because Israel hasn’t given them any.
Blowing up houses only takes out anger on lifeless buildings. Those who lived there are still alive—and able to seek revenge in the future.
As Niccolo Machiavelli once warned: But above all [a ruler] must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their inheritance.
But there is an alternative which Israelis must almost certainly be considering at this time.
Its purpose: To instill a sense of civic responsibility—however begrudgingly—in their Islamic citizens.
Every time such an atrocity occurs, Israel could deport at least 10,000 Arabs from its territory.
Suddenly, Arabs living in Israel would have real incentive for preventing such attacks against Israelis. Or at least for reporting to police the intentions of those they knew were planning such attacks.
“Hey,” they would think, “if Abdul blows up that police station like he said he wants to, I could get sent to a refugee camp.”
The odds are there would be s sudden influx of Arab informants to Israeli police stations.
Machiavelli, the 15th century Florentine statesmen, carefully studied both war and politics. In his most famous—or infamous—work, The Prince, he advises:
Niccolo Machiavelli
From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved.
For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours: they offer you their blood, their goods, their life and their children, when the necessity is remote, but when it approaches, they revolt.
And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined; for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is bought but not secured, and at a pinch is not to be expended in your service.
And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligations which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.
Machiavelli knew–and warned–that while it was useful to avoid hatred, it was fatal to be despised. And he also warned that humility toward insolent enemies only encourages their hatred.
Accompanying this is the advice of perhaps the greatest general of the American Civil War: William Tecumseh Sherman.
Sherman, whose army cut a swath of destruction through the South in 1864, said it best. Speaking of the Southern Confederacy, he advised: “They cannot be made to love us, but they may be made to fear us.”
Israelis will never be able to make its sworn Islamic enemies love them. But they can instill such a healthy fear in most of them that such atrocities as the recent synagogue butchery will become a rarity.
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