Turbulent times often cause Western opinion leaders to seek out appropriate Winston Churchill quotes. Perhaps a few of Sir Winston’s observations would be useful to President Obama in the aftermath of the midterm elections as a weak economic recovery and problematic actors abroad threaten to cloud his prospects for re-election in 2012. On confiscatory taxation: “The idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the cruelest delusions which has befuddled the human mind.”
Hopefully, the resentment of the president’s acquiescence on extending the Bush-era tax rates is short-lived, for a clear majority of Americans now share Churchill’s correct perception regarding taxes and economic prosperity.
On trade: “I am very much in favor of trade not aid.”
The president now has an opportunity to break free from the self-destructive, anti-trade platitudes of organized labor and the political left. Congressional approval of the three pending trade agreements would be met with approval by business and Clintonian free-trade Democrats (who have been sidelined over the past two years).
Added sweeteners would be more jobs and lower prices for American consumers.
On unemployment and the welfare state: “We must try to seek the remedies of the disease, not merely the remedies for the symptoms.”
The current debate over extension of unemployment benefits is the classic vehicle for today’s class warriors. In fact, before the announcement of the “Great Compromise” between the president and congressional Republicans, Vice President Biden and other senior Democrats played the rhetorical game bemoaning cold-hearted Republicans willing to let poor people starve (i.e., lose their unemployment benefits) in order to secure tax breaks for their millionaire friends.
Similar class warfare rhetoric accompanied passage of federal welfare reform in 1996; fortunately, the specter of thousands of starving Americans on the streets because their five years of federal benefits were up never materialized. “Remedies for symptoms” should have expiration dates.
President Clinton understood this truism when he signed the welfare bill crafted by a Republican Congress. In the process, he gained credibility with mainstream America.
Similarly, President Obama can take advantage of lower political expectations by working with an ascendant GOP majority in the House to achieve “remedies for the disease” — comprehensive tax reform and real spending restraint. Winston would be proud.
On appeasement: “An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”
The president’s trips abroad (characterized in various quarters as “apology tours”) have had little positive effect on the problem children of the world.
A nuclear Iran has alarmed Israel, our allies in Europe and many Arab neighbors in the Middle East. Recent aggression by North Korea has again rattled the Korean Peninsula, and China has shown little or no willingness to make its brutal client state behave in an orderly way.
Dreams of a “nuclear free world” are misplaced in light of so many aggressive moves by hostile regimes. An Obama administration willing to unambiguously and unapologetically tout “victory” in the asymmetric war against terror would make our enemies around the world sit up and take notice.
Apologies for past policy failures may have their place in diplomacy. Apologies and accompanying appeasement rhetoric are not appropriate when those who wish to do us harm appear to be energized by it and are in increasingly aggressive moods.
In the 1930s, it was the never-politically-correct Churchill who warned that the English-speaking world and communism would constitute the great opposing forces of the future. A similar Obama declaration regarding democracies and despotic terror regimes might further antagonize the hard left, but would be a welcome sign of strength in the approximately 40 states that lie between the coasts.
Churchill, like all political leaders, had his flaws. His ability to successfully think and operate outside his political comfort zone, however, is unmatched in recent political history.
President Obama would do well to catch up with Churchill’s tried and true wisdom. It might even help his election prospects during what promises to be a tumultuous next two years.
Robert Ehrlich is the former governor of Maryland.
