Top Museums and Exhibits in Chicago in 2011

Time Out Chicago has a ranking of the top five museums and exhibits in the Chicago area for 2011, and number one on the list is the non-partisan Pritzker Military Library, for which both Shil and I serve as members of the Young Professionals Association (which Shil co-founded). I half apologize for the shameless plug, but the accolade for the Library is worth highlighting to promote the Library and its purpose.

If you haven’t yet visited the Pritzker Military Library, I recommend that you do. It houses an extensive collection of books, films, art, and military artifacts, and there is a wide variety of programming organized by a wonderful staff who works hard to promote our citizen soldiers. Much of the programming is available on the Library’s website in the form of recorded video and audio. The Library is located in a beautiful building with a great location on Michigan Avenue, across from Millennium Park and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Congratulations to the Pritzker Military Library. We hope that you have the chance to visit it and to become a supporter.

Iraq’s Post-American Future

While probably every American wants to be able to end the war in Iraq and bring the troops home as soon as it is reasonable to do so, the President’s announcement that we would remove all but a residual force of 3,000 troops next year is a huge mistake. Undoubtedly the President was guided heavily by his re-election efforts in making that decision. While there was disagreement over an important negotiation point about immunity for American troops, the administration seemed willing to take advantage of that disagreement so that it could bring the troops home and start claiming, heading into the election year, that the President fulfilled a campaign promise.

Supporters of the President may claim that ending the war is what most voters want. That may be true, as it was true that much of the Iraq war strategy that President Bush implemented and President Obama continued was opposed by a significant number of voters. Doing what may seem popular, however, is not always wise. Such is the case with ending the Iraq effort so abruptly and risking a loss of the progress there that we have invested so much to achieve.

Former U.S. envoy to Iraq, Paul Bremer, has offered a criticism of the President’s decision to leave Iraq. He includes risks of doing so, such as more terrorism there and in the region, a weakening of Iraq’s new democratic institutions, less ability for the U.S. to gather intelligence, and the influence of Iran. Bremer’s warnings should be remembered as we unfortunately attempt to end the war on a timeline that suits President Obama’s re-election schedule.

An Entitlement or Opportunity Society

Mitt Romney’s op-ed last week made waves among people who read it during the holiday rush. Romney used a clever and accurate framing of the choice the country faces, asking whether we want to be an entitlement or an opportunity society. He defines the choices this way:

In an Entitlement Society, government provides every citizen the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to innovate, pioneer or take risk. In an Opportunity Society, free people living under a limited government choose whether or not to pursue education, engage in hard work, and pursue the passion of their ideas and dreams. If they succeed, they merit the rewards they are able to enjoy.

In other words, do we want the government to try to provide equal outcomes, or do we want equal opportunity? Conservatives know this is a winning way to frame the philosophies of conservatives and progressives, as do many people on the left. Michael Tomasky is one person on the left who recognizes and acknowledges the effectiveness of such framing, so he pretends that the compassion of Americans for the less fortunate justifies evermore government intervention attempting to even the playing field. But while Americans want people to make more money, have access to healthcare, and have equal opportunities, they know that not every government attempt to purportedly achieve those goals is  justified or wise.

Jeb Bush also wrote an op-ed chiming in on the same subject. His conclusion is well-written:

In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.

The statist promise of the left is indeed a flat line. As I recently wrote, the issue of income inequality is a red herring that misses the underlying causes of our economic woes, which are largely comprised of entitlement programs with outdated models that cannot be sustained in their current forms and with current circumstances. But changing entitlement programs and mindsets regarding those programs is difficult. Robert Samuelson recently wrote that our political system is failing us on this issue, and he summed up the political struggle to admit what is truly ailing the country:

No one wants to take away; it’s more fun to give. All 2011′s budget feuds — over the debt ceiling, the supercommittee, the payroll tax cut — skirted the central issues. There’s a legitimate debate about how fast deficits should be reduced to avoid jeopardizing the economic recovery, notes Charles Blahous, a White House official in the George W. Bush Administration. But the long-term budget problem, as he says, stems from Social Security, Medicare and other health programs.

Any resolution of the budget impasse must repudiate, at least partially, the past half-century’s politics. Conservatives look at the required tax increases and say: “no way.” Liberals look at the required benefit cuts and say: “no way.”

That’s just it: the Democrat party is wed to the current and failing entitlement state, and acknowledging its unsustainability would require at least a partial repudiation of their general political philosophy. Even many Republicans are afraid to push for entitlement reform (remember the Republican party reaction when Bush made Social Security reform a priority for his second term?). Many on the left argue that Republicans are ideologically and obstinately opposed to tax increases, and that major spending cuts would hurt the less wealthy (see Tomasky’s article above). While there is some truth to the former argument, Republicans mostly don’t want to agree to any tax increases for two reasons right now.

The first reason is the concern about the effect of tax increases on a slow economy. The next is that Republicans have learned over a long history that while taxes might go up and down, spending always goes up. Republicans know from experience that they cannot concede higher tax rates without firm mechanisms to enforce significant spending cuts, particularly to the contentious entitlement programs.

As for the argument that spending cuts would hurt poor people, whom Tomasky quickly reminds us are supported by the right and left alike, therein lies the fork in the road that Romney and Jeb Bush are describing. Do we want government to continue to spend money as we have with education and healthcare, knowing that more government spending doesn’t actually mean better results, or do we want to diminish the long- and short-term threats that the debt poses while balancing the short-term concerns about significant spending cuts and tax reform? What the Republican nominee will provide is a path toward the latter.

As Romney describes, we are at a very clear fork in the road. Both the right and left will generally try to shape the definition of the two available paths, but Mitt Romney’s framing is essentially correct. We can choose a country where the government continues to grow in an effort to prop up crumbling entitlement programs and to tax in a tail wagging the dog effort to reduce income inequality, or we can choose a free society with more opportunity and the risk that not everyone will be as successful as we would all prefer.

The Income Inequality Red Herring

President Obama and many in his party seem to have adopted the misguided Occupy Wall Street effort of blaming income inequality for our economic woes. Like Obamacare was misguided in attacking a symptom – lack of health insurance access – instead of the root causes of healthcare problems, the President and his party seem to be addressing the wrong issue again with income inequality. That’s okay, however, as doing so only increases the contrast in choices for voters in 2012.

The argument that raising marginal tax rates on high income earners will boost the economy is nonsense, although it may take advantage of voter angst and frustration. Charles Krauthammer succinctly describes the absurdity of the President’s message:

As is his solution, that old perennial: selective abolition of the Bush tax cuts. As if all that ails us, all that keeps the economy from humming and the middle class from advancing, is a 4.6-point hike in marginal tax rates for the rich.

While income inequality is a concern, it’s only a symptom. We need to grow the economy and reduce our debt, not simply redistribute a small amount of income that would achieve neither goal. The Democrats, however, seem to want to focus on income inequality because they think class warfare gives them their best chance to win in 2012 (as opposed to promoting Obamacare, the stimulus, etc.). That’s why we’re seeing games of chicken over minor issues like the payroll tax instead of serious discussions on needed spending cuts and entitlement reform.

Democrats want to say that attempts to cut spending and to reform entitlements, as opposed to simply taxing the rich, are unjust and mean. Republicans, they say, are protecting the rich at the expense of the middle class. That’s the message they want for 2012. What is truly unjust, however, is allowing crushing debt that is holding back the economy and threatens to do so far into the future, especially when we can make necessary changes much less painfully now than we will be able to later after the problems have worsened (see Europe).

We can focus on taxing the rich, which will not make a dent in the debt, salvage entitlement programs, nor grow the economy, or we can address the real causes of our problems. The income inequality argument is just a distraction from what we need to focus on, and from what the Democrats are unlikely to reform (see e.g., California, where the latest Democrat plan is to raise taxes yet again without structural spending reforms). While that distraction may be politically beneficial to the Democrat party, it might not help solve our problems.

Republicans have offered and will continue to offer entitlement reform that preserves the programs, tax reform that broadens the tax base and lowers rates, and spending cuts that shrink government and help reduce our debt. One may not approve of all Republican proposals on those issues, but it’s clear that only one party is actually going to address the root causes of our financial problems. Voters can choose in 2012 which approach they prefer. If we want to attack the red herring of income inequality by increasing taxes, then the Democrats are surely who to vote for.

Framing a Mitt vs. Newt Race

While a lot can still happen in the GOP primary, it is starting to look more and more like a contest between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. As my friend Guy Benson discussed as guest host of the Hugh Hewitt radio show Friday, Newt has risen from almost nowhere after his campaign seemed to have collapsed at its beginning. Romney, on the other hand, started as the top competitor for the 2012 nomination, and he has survived all the non-Romney challengers so far. Enter Newt as the current, and perhaps final non-Romney.

Charles Krauthammer framed the Mitt vs. Newt contest yesterday. His bottom line was this:

My own view is that Republicans would have been better served by the candidacies of Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan or Chris Christie. Unfortunately, none is running. You play the hand you’re dealt. This is a weak Republican field with two significantly flawed front-runners contesting an immensely important election. If Obama wins, he will take the country to a place from which it will not be able to return (which is precisely his own objective for a second term).

Every conservative has thus to ask himself two questions: Who is more likely to prevent that second term? And who, if elected, is less likely to unpleasantly surprise?

George Will seems to believe that neither Romney nor Gingrich would prevent the slide away from limited government. This past week, Will was on Laura Ingraham’s show and had some troubling predictions about the future of conservatism based on what the presidential choices seem to be right now:

“Ask yourself this: Suppose Gingrich or Romney become president and gets re-elected – suppose you had eight years of this,” Will said. “What would the conservative movement be? How would it understand itself after eight years? I think what would have gone away, perhaps forever, is the sense of limited government, the Tenth Amendment, Madisonian government of limited, delegated and enumerated powers — the sense conservatism is indeed tied to limitations on federal authority and the police power wielded by Congress — that would all be gone. It’s hard to know what would be left.”

Will was critical of Newt, and a few weeks prior, he slammed Romney in a column, comparing him with Michael Dukakis. In that column, Will predicted that having Romney at the top of the Republican ticket would hurt the party by deflating the voting base needed to propel lower ticket candidates.

I don’t in any way intend to dishearten anyone about 2012, but I think a lot of people right now are wondering, in a situation that seems like it should be a slam dunk to replace President Obama in 2012, is this the best we can do? A lot of people are quick to point out that the Republican field will be deep and talented in 2016 and 2020, but if George Will is correct, how much will that matter?