Politics wonk: Barack Obama’s Broken Promise
Ten years ago this week, Barack Obama launched his presidential run with an online video in which he made a huge promise, recalls Chris Cillizza in The Washington Post: The “central reason” Obama said he was running was “to fix broken politics.” By which he meant a process “so bitter and partisan” that “our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common-sense way.” That, notes Cillizza, turned out to be a case of “an idealist promising something . . . that was never going to happen.” Now Donald Trump’s election suggests that “Obama’s belief that people want a bigger and better politics may no longer hold true.”
From the right: Urban Terrorist’s Shameful Release
Obama’s decision to commute Oscar Lopez Rivera’s prison sentence is “a bold move” that says “this is my idea of justice,” observes Matthew Hennesey in City Journal. Whether Rivera deserves it is another matter. After all, he’s “a sworn enemy of the United States” who has never denied his role in planting 130 bombs for the Puerto Rican nationalist group FALN in the ’70s — mostly in New York. And he has “never indicated that he is sorry for the death and destruction he sowed during his days of rage.” Yet he’s attracted “legions of left-wing admirers.” And to Obama, all that mattered “was that the cool crowd wanted Lopez Rivera to go free.” Says Hennessey: If Obama “did anything more shameful during his eight years in office, I must have missed it.”
Conservative take: Inaugural Boycott’s Real Reason
John Lewis and other Democrats boycotting the inauguration are “acting out,” argues Roger Simon at PJ Media, probably because “a particularly raw nerve has been touched, some basic fear triggered.” Sure, they blame Trump’s rhetoric and the Russians. But “deep down, it’s something else, something far more potent: They’re afraid Donald Trump might actually succeed.” That “this supposedly vulgar, rude man who makes politically incorrect comments” might be “the one finally to put our disadvantaged communities on the road to economic recovery and opportunity.” After all, under Obama we’ve seen “a rise in unchecked violence, largely black-on-black, in many African-American communities,” as well as “substantially diminished labor participation rates, particularly among the young.” Say what you will, Trump “is clearly not about the status quo.”
Numbers cruncher: Myth of the Stagnating Middle Class
We hear it from everyone — Bernie Sanders even made it the theme of his presidential campaign: The American middle class is disappearing. And the suggested solution is always the same: more government intervention. But Ben Shapiro at National Review says it’s all a myth: “In actuality, the American middle class has been doing just fine.” Figures suggesting a drop in middle-class incomes between 1967 and 2014 show “that everybody just got wealthier.” That, he says, is “not a collapsing middle class. That’s a growing upper-middle class.” Some of this misperception comes from romanticizing the past. “But part of it is politicians constantly drilling into Americans that they’re being screwed by the guy at the top, and that only government can fix that problem.”
Libertarian: Big Box Stores Should Look to 19th Century
Talk of department stores like Macy’s possibly collapsing has shocked some, but Virginia Postrel at Bloomberg says she “really didn’t expect them to last this long.” Since the 1970s, people increasingly have “had little time to shop, especially in big stores,” and catalogs “primed” these consumers for e-commerce. The answer is to provide an in-store experience. Thus Bed Bath Beyond has opened a Brooklyn store that “includes a restaurant and space for cooking classes.” This hearkens back to the days when department stores “included elegant tearooms, suitable for ladies who’d never frequent saloons,” as well as “concerts and fashion shows” plus “playgrounds and nurseries.” Postrel suggests “for retailers and their landlords, the future lies in giving customers a place to socialize and learn.”
Compiled by Eric Fettmann