Bad News, Good News, and Musings

It's been 24 hours.  24 hours since the disappointment of the election, at least to guys like me.  If you've been reading you know my thoughts on the Presidency.  I was for Romney.  There is a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on.  Pick your reason why it turned out the way it did.  But it doesn't really matter.  That's sorta the beauty of our system.  The other guy won.  Period.  Now we move forward.  So the bad news is Obama won.

But there is a lot of good news.  Every four years we go through this and either reelect or elect a President.  It is painful, but also peaceful.  The experiment in democracy lives on.  We the people have spoken.  Billions of dollars were spent.  Billions of words were spoken.  It was painful, but peaceful.

The other bit of good news is that we will have a check to Obama's rampant spending.  That check is the House of Representatives.  The founding fathers knew what they were doing.  Many will lament the gridlock.  But it doesn't have to be that way.  Obama has been the one that wouldn't compromise.  If he has learned something and now reaches across the aisle, maybe something will get done.  If not...gridlock.  Okay by me.  Stop the insanity of spending what we don't have.  I hope they can get together, but at some point principle must prevail.

A few musings about the election and the future.

• The Republicans are at a dramatic crossroads.  That much is clear.  They can move to the right and keep talking about "taking back the country" that the tea-party radicals are touting, and they will disintegrate.  They will be a small footnote in the national dialog.  They better wake up.  The country is a center-right country.  They need to think through all of the contemporary issues that are important to people and come up with reasonable positions.  Abortion, immigration, gay rights (whatever that is), women's issues, a revamped tax code, etc.  If the Republicans continue to have postions that a large portion of the population thinks are "extreme", they will lose.
• No more rich white guys from the Northeast.  Don't get me wrong.  I really like and respect Mitt Romney, but he has a tough time connecting with a big piece of the electorate.  The Republicans have a stable of great future candidates.  Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Nicky Haley, Ted Cruz, Susana Marinez, Kelly Ayotte, etc, etc, etc.  There are a ton of them.  If the Republican party doesn't turn to them, they are done.
• During the next four years there will be one or more foreign policy crises.  I don't think Obama is remotely equipped to deal with it.  And if Clinton leaves there will be a big hole.  The best that we can hope for is status quo.  We had better all hope that the next four years doesn't bring a large, messy crises, because that could be extremely dangerous.  I agree with George Friedman's latest article on STRATFOR.

• One of the hardest things for a young empire to master is the principle that, for the most part, there is nothing to be done. That is the phase in which the United States finds itself at the moment. It is coming to terms not so much with the limits of power as the nature of power. Great power derives from the understanding of the difference between those things that matter and those that don't, and from a ruthless indifference to those that don't. It is a hard thing to learn, but history is teaching it to the United States.  The gridlock in which this election has put the U.S. government is a suitable frame for this lesson. While Obama might want to launch major initiatives in domestic policy, he can't. At the same time, he seems not to have the appetite for foreign adventures. It is not clear whether this is simply a response to miscalculation or a genuine strategic understanding, but in either case, adopting a more cautious foreign policy will come naturally to him. This will create a framework that begins to institutionalize two lessons: First, it is rarely necessary to go to war, and second, when you do go to war, go with everything you have. Obama will follow the first lesson, and there is time for the second to be learned by others. He will practice the studied indifference that most foreign problems pose to the United States.  There will be a great deal of unhappiness with the second Obama administration overseas. As much as the world condemns the United States when it does something, at least part of the world is usually demanding some action. Obama will disappoint, but it is not Obama. Just as the elections will paralyze him domestically, reality will limit his foreign policy. Immobilism is something the founders would have been comfortable with, both in domestic politics and in foreign policy. The voters have given the republic a government that will give them both.

• This election wasn't all about the Presidency.  Here in So Cal the people bought the crazy story from Moonbeam and his union cronies and raised taxes on themselves.  They bought the story that the money will go to the schools.  I have no faith, none, zero, that the current electorate in California will ever hold their politicians accountable.  It is a shame.  The beaches are nice.  The mountains are great.  It's a fun place to live.  But the politicians are rotten.  And they are driving the state toward insolvency.  I really don't know if the people are uneducated, apathetic, gullible, or I really do live in a Socialist state.  I just don't know.  I have some linkages here or would be gone.
• I think we have a big problem with media.  They have taken sides.  The networks, cable, talk radio, etc.  Everyone has a bias.  Everyone has a point of view.  The outlets that get the biggest audience influence the most people.  And here's the dirty secret that most people don't know.  Big corporations own a lot of the media.  GE, Disney, Viacom, etc.  And they have their own agenda.  I'm not talking left or right.  I'm talking freedom of the press.  I'm a big First Amendment guy.  But how do we, how should we, how can we ensure fairness?   Clearly limits aren't acceptable.  Clearly personal responsibility doesn't work.  Clearly filters aren't constitutional.  I don't have the answer. 

• Another big problem, and I think this is a huge problem, are the out of control ads.  Once again I don't have an answer, but something has to be done.  Here in So Cal we weren't subjected to the hideous, distorted, dare I say it...un-American ads by the Obama machine.  But I did get a tast of them earlier this week in Florida.  Bad, real bad.  I'd heard of them but until you've seen them, it doesn't hit home.  The ads were the worst I'd ever seen.  Now maybe Romney had some bad ones too, but I didn't see any over two days of watching TV.  But if you didn't know anything about Romney and relied on those ads to guide you at the polls, there is no way you vote for the Governor.  I think that's just wrong. 

So it's over.  Back to day to day life.  And in that day to day life politics don't have a huge impact.  Except when they take a bigger tax bite.  But I'll deal with that.  Unfortunately the way I'll deal with it is to reduce my charitable contributions.  And I don't think I'll be alone.  Watch contributions to charities over the next few years as taxes go up.  For most people, their finances are a zero sum game.  If you move some money to one place, you take some from another place.  It's just human nature.  

Finally, I don't remotely buy that this was the seminal election that many made it out to be.  Just do a cursory look at our history and you'll know what I mean.  But for me the importance of this election is to realize how the country has changed, is changing.  I still strongly believe we're on the wrong fiscal path.  I hope to have a little more time over the next four years to be a better citizen and be a more active part of the process.  After all, you're either part of the solution, or you're part of the problem...