The Elephant Speaks

by Melissa Langsam Braunstein

There’s an elephant in the Forum, and it’s no use ignoring it. This school prizes diversity, recruiting students from many countries and many backgrounds. It prides itself on welcoming a variety of minority groups to campus, and that is a good thing. Within the context of these walls, I am something of a minority, just not one the Kennedy School typically brags about. Rarer than a spotted zebra - I am a Harvard Republican.

About half of the country voted for the Republican candidate in each of the last three presidential cycles, but only a handful of us are here at HKS as students and faculty. Consequently, many students graduate lacking a basic understanding of what Republicans and conservatives believe in - such as free markets, limited but effective government, and strict constructionist judges - or why we hold those beliefs. That is ridiculous.

The Kennedy School does its students and the country a disservice when it trains future leaders by presenting just half of every story. A school that prides itself on respecting diversity should respect diversity across the ideological spectrum.

Republican principles might seem more familiar if HKS made a concerted effort to foster balance. The administration needs to recruit more conservative faculty. Liberal-leaning professors should encourage conservative students to participate in class discussions and include more conservative authors on their reading lists. As it does with other minority groups, the admissions committee should work to attract more conservative applicants - while never lowering admissions standards, since that would offend our own conservative principles.

Harvey Mansfield, the lone outspoken conservative on Harvard College’s faculty, is famous for saying that conservative students get the best education at the College because their every comment is challenged. As a College graduate, I can attest that is true; my undeclared minor was debate. So, after seven years in Republican-controlled Washington, I had to think hard about whether I wanted to come back to Cambridge. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be the red dot in the sea of blue again. But here I am.

I often find myself in classes hearing my political party and its members caricatured. Last year, a professor informed one of my classes that Mike Huckabee would be my party’s nominee, because we all take marching orders from the Christian Right. I’m not sure he knew there was a Republican primary voter in the room, that I’m a practicing Jew, or that my brain likes exercise.

One thing I do know: you should always let facts get between you and a good stereotype. I am living proof that the Republican Party is kaleidoscopic, and there are many others like me. We are not the homogenous, over-simplified party the media often portrays.

Even more troubling, though, is something Republican pollster Frank Luntz has noted publicly. It is something I have sometimes seen here at the Kennedy School too: a sense that there can be no honest disagreement. A sense that not only are the Republicans out there wrong, but they are EVIL. The divide is visceral, and it’s personal. It benefits all of us if we can look beyond our classmates’ party labels and know the individuals beneath them.

For the record, we - Republicans - are right here at the Kennedy School, and we probably have more in common with you than you think.

I also believe in public service. I also want to make the world better. Every day I am inspired by a concept called Tikkun Olam, whereby Jews are called upon to repair the world. I do not, however, believe that government has all the answers. I champion the laboratory of the states. And I want a commander-in-chief who is perceived as tough so when he says “all options are on the table,” our enemies believe it.

But when you disagree with me - about school vouchers, bringing ROTC back to Harvard’s campus, or free trade, all of which I support - please pause and consider. I might think some of your ideas are misguided, but I’ll assume you genuinely believe them. That you care passionately and deeply, that you have thought long and hard, that you have reasons. Shouldn’t you assume the same? After all, I may be an elephant, but I too, am part of HKS.

-April 29, 2009 edition of HKS' The Citizen

The Dalai Lama Speaks Truth to Cambridge

The Dalai Lama has been visiting the Boston area, and I’d like to mention a few reports. First, a note from an NRO reader:

Hi, Jay,

I had the great opportunity to see the Dalai Lama speak at MIT this afternoon. When he opened the forum to audience Q&A, the following stunning exchange occurred (I will paraphrase):

Audience member: “Can you give us an example of a leader we should look up to as a positive influence?”

Dalai Lama (after thinking for a few seconds): “President Bush. I met him personally and liked him very much. He was honest and straightforward, and that is very important. I may not have agreed with all his policies, but I thought he was very honest and a very good leader.”

All this in Cambridge . . .

Incidentally, when he said, “I may not have agreed with all his policies,” the audience broke out into relieved laughter, as if they could not believe that someone — the Dalai Lama — almost made it through remarks about Bush with only positive sentiments.

And here is an item from The Tech, an MIT newspaper:

After his speech, the Dalai Lama answered questions, including one about model leaders. He singled out President George W. Bush for his straightforwardness, but stopped short on complimenting him for much else.

“I love him”, said the Dalai Lama of President Bush, “but as far as his policies are concerned, I have reservations.”

Full article, here. (Is it MIT policy to leave commas outside of quotation marks, British-style?) And here is something from the Boston Globe: “. . . the Dalai Lama said, referring to former President George W. Bush, ‘I love President Bush,’ acknowledging serious policy disagreements, but citing Bush’s warm personality.” (Full article.)

Finally, a blogger, whom Google brought up:

. . . he came out and told people he and Bush instantly hit it off and he loved the warmonger. He said he would withhold judgment on the attack of Iraq. He also said he supported Bush’s “war on terror” because, according to him, some humans are just inherently evil, referring to the Muslim “extremists” Bush branded for the kill. Bush is evil but the Dalai Lama proclaimed he loved him. The Dalai Lama is no Buddist.

(Full piece here.)

In my experience — and I’m just generalizing here — the better the person, the more positive he is about George W. Bush. Certainly the less snarky and narrow. Most of the people I admire most, admire the 43rd president. (Please note that I said “most of the people,” not “all of the people.”) This is particularly true of those who know something about tyranny, and the need to resist it: e.g., the Dalai Lama.

Anyway . . .

05/01 09:09 AM
Jay Nordlinger/National Review's Corner

President or prom king?

Am I the only one who finds it rich to hear our president continue to lecture us about how we need to be responsible? After his outrageously wasteful stimulus bill and budget proposal? I feel plenty responsible; I never bought a home I couldn't afford or took on massive credit card debt; I always pay my taxes. I also remember to do all of my work and keep my promises to other people. And our new president?

The nation's economy is melting down, and Obama's working on March Madness playoff brackets? He's flying off to California to degrade the office of the presidency and appear on Leno?! Does this man want to be prom king or president?

Truly, he complains that everyone has opinion, and that everyone is like Simon Cowell? In other words, people are mean! Says the man who uttered the cruel and totally gratuitous remark comparing his bowling to that of a Special Olympian. Talk about emotionally tone deaf.

Dear American people, you are only allowed to have opinions if they are nice, unless you want to have mean opinions and direct them at those awful Republicans, like my predecessor, or Rush Limbaugh. My thin skin cannot take it . . . and don't criticize my unfunny jokes, or I'll have to bore you with my awkward and unfunny retort.

The Audacity of Type

Two months into a presidency that is an exercise in improvisation, led by a president who dislikes commenting on tough issues (See: Burris) and is willing to act completely undignified (seriously, insulting the British?? Diplomacy does not mean sticking a finger in your friend's eye), it is worth reflecting. All those Republicans who ranted against Bush-Cheney and the McCain-Palin ticket last fall, are you satisfied?

Palin may not have been ready to be president, but this man cannot even deliver introductory remarks without a teleprompter. He has appointed a disturbing number of individuals, who seem to believe paying taxes is for suckers, and he is willing to invite extremists like Chas Freeman to join the top ranks of his Administration. How can any democratic government make the claim that it is legitimate and then recruit a man who wanted a tougher crackdown - ie, more student murders - at Tiananmen Square in 1989? Who are these people??

Palinphobes and the audacity of type

By Noemie Emery
Examiner Columnist | 3/17/09 9:40 PM

Now that the Obama presidency is nearing the 60-day mark, it’s time to thank those fastidious scribes on the left and the right who worked so hard to warn us against Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, and the dire things that would surely occur if she ever got close to executive power.

How right they were to insist that she was unfit for high office. Let’s just imagine what she might have done:

As president, she might have caused the stock market to plunge over 2,000 points in the six weeks after she assumed office, left important posts in the Treasury unfilled for two months, been described by insiders as ‘overwhelmed’ by the office, and then gone on to diss the British Prime Minister on his first state visit, giving him, as one head of state to another, a set of DVDs plucked from the aisles of Wal Mart, a tasteful gift, even if they can’t be played on a TV in Britain. (Note, the Prime Minister, who is losing his eyesight, may even be blind in one eye).

As vice president, she might have told Katie Couric that when the stock market crashed in 1929, President Franklin D. Roosevelt went on TV to reassure a terrified nation. Or on her first trip abroad as Secretary of State, she might have, as the AP reported, “raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe...when she mispronounced her “EU counterparts names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe’s,” then gave the Russian minister a gag “reset” button, on which the word “reset” was translated incorrectly.

What a good thing that Palin, whom Christopher Buckley called “an embarrassment, and a dangerous one,” wasn’t in office to cause such debacles, and that we have Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton instead.

“This is not a leader, this is a follower,” wrote ex-Reagan muse Peggy Noonan. “She follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine...she doesn’t seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts.”

Huh? While indulging in prose such as this, the Palinphobes didn’t seem to understand the implications of Palin’s record as governor, which they appear to never have looked at, while obsessing over her life in Alaska (too rural), her children (too many), and her exploits as a huntress (too much).

This is the flip side of their refusal to be disturbed by the fact that Obama had no record to speak of, as long as he looked like a Gap or Vogue model, and could write and could talk up a storm. A Gap or Vogue model would never disgrace you, and besides, he was there.

“You’re camping, and you wake up one morning and there is a mountain,” as David Brooks put it. “The next morning, there is a mountain...Obama is just the mountain. He is just there.” Braced by rationales such as this, the literati flocked to Obama, while denouncing Palin as appealing to the party’s least logical members and wing.

Call the Palinphobes lacking in logic and they will have tantrums, but this time the sandal might fit. This is the Audacity of Type, a faith-based illusion if ever there was one, the belief that qualities shared by and appealing to pundits and writers - glibness, a worldly patina, and a superficial verbal facility - are those needed to run a great nation in a troubled and dangerous era.

But which is more rational, to place limited trust in a proven reformer, who can learn certain facts she does not know already, or to breathe fictional traits into an unknown quantity, who has never run anything, or ever done much besides talk?

“Having a first class temperament and first class intellect, President Obama will...surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit.” Buckley wrote last October. Surely he will.

Obama may be there, but your 401k isn’t. Buckley and Brooks are now feeling queasy, while Noonan and friends are taking to Xanax. “The sale of antidepressants and antianxiety drugs is widespread,” she reported last Friday. “People feel ‘unled, overwhelmed.”’

But at least, we now have sophisticates running the country, not a moose-hunting ditz from Alaska. God knows what might happen then.

Examiner columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”

Memo to Larry Summers

Economic efficiency and the housing markets:
If the goal is to increase the number of Americans who own their own homes or stay in their homes, especially among low-income homeowners, there is another more efficient way. Ask Congress to expand the homeownership tax credit. That is a much more direct way to get money to the people who actually need it, rather than funneling it through Fannie and Freddie. As you noted in your own Wall Street Journal editorial last summer - their attempting to do both well and do good was inevitably going to end in conflict. Now Americans are being asked to pay for it, and they aren't too happy . . .

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853

My Way or the Highway?

Barbara Boxer took to the Senate floor the other day to chide her colleagues who might take a "my way or the highway" approach to the stimulus bill, by pointing out its flaws. Isn't that just what Congressional Democrats are now doing though? Everyone agrees that times are bad and that something needs to be done, but not necessarily Nancy Pelosi's something. That negative tone is only added to by the new President's unseemly fear mongering. What ever happened to hope?

According to a recent opinion poll, only 37% of Americans support the Democratic proposal for stimulating the economy by spending on projects that won't happen for another 2-3 years or will overwhelm the absorptive capacity of small organizations. Shoveling money out the door as fast as possible is not a strategy. If this nearly trillion dollar hodgepodge fails to energize the economy and simply adds an additional tax burden to Pelosi's grandchildren's generation, what will she say?

Republicans support fast-acting tax relief, not Democrats’ boondoggle

By Michael Steele

During his campaign, President Obama's advisers promised an economic stimulus that would be "timely, targeted and temporary." It sounded pretty good. But now congressional Democrats are pushing something very different.

The legislation written by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is shortsighted, with potentially harmful long-term ramifications. What was supposed to be an immediate boost to our economy has morphed into yet another overreaching spending boondoggle. There's no place for things like $45 million for ATV trails and government office renovations. Yet, that's precisely the sort of unnecessary spending that Reid and Pelosi are pushing.

Perhaps that's why polls show most Americans want major changes to the stimulus bill moving through Congress. The Republican Party is listening, and ready to work with President Obama to craft legislation that would immediately create jobs.

We should first agree that with so many taxpayers struggling to pay their own bills, every dollar must help job creation. Republicans offered ideas to focus the stimulus directly on creating jobs and helping homeowners, but the Democrat leaders in Congress preferred the top-down big government approach.

In his news conference this week, the president was selling fast and hard. He clearly senses that the American people have had enough of these trillion-dollar spending sprees. As the loyal opposition, Republicans have a responsibility to call him out when he errs, and work with him when he is right.

In that spirit, let's recognize the Democrats' spending bill is a mistake. If you like government dependence, you will love the Reid-Pelosi plan that they are jamming through Congress.

Republicans have a better solution: an economic recovery plan that lets families and small businesses keep more of what they earn. By our analysis, the Republican plan would create 6.2 million jobs, twice the number created under the Democrats' plan, at half the cost. We favor fast-acting tax relief that will boost our economy and create new jobs not slow-moving, wasteful government spending.

It's an honest and fundamental disagreement, and we stand ready to work with the president on a plan that will directly help taxpayers to make ends meet and get our economy back on track.

Michael Steele is chairman of the Republican National Committee.

(USA Today, February 12, 2009)

For Thee, But Not For Me

During the 2008 campaign, we got an earful about taxes and how paying them was a patriotic duty. Now it turns out that Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle have other patriotic hobbies that have kept their dollars preoccupied . . .

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the party whip, had this to say after hearing the news about Mr. Daschle: “It is easy for the other side to advocate for higher taxes because — you know what? — they don’t pay them.” -- New York Times, January 31, 2009