An open letter to Sen. Barack Obama

The following is an open letter to Barack Obama. First, kudos on finally getting the nomination. That was a struggle, wasn’t it?

Now comes a very important decision, whom to pick for your running mate. You are in luck, for I have the perfect choice for you. No, it’s not Hillary. There are roughly 87 zillion reasons why she wouldn’t work well as your running mate, though you certainly want her to campaign for you. There is one obvious choice for your number two, Sen. Jim Webb of VA.

He is right for you in so many ways. First, choosing him puts Virginia in play for the Democrats for the first time in decades. It’s become sort of a purple state lately. Putting Webb on the ticket will push it over the brink. Second, Se. Webb is a former Republican and even served under Ronald Reagan. He'll set just the right tone for you - a military hawk who nevertheless thought the war in Iraq was a bad idea. That will give McCain and the right wing talk show hosts fits. How can Rush and O’Reilly say you don’t know anything about foreign policy when you have Webb on your team. In all candor, there are a lot of moderates who are with you on the domestic and social issues. Nevertheless, they aren’t yet convinced that you are the right person to handle a foreign policy crisis. Adding Webb can change all that.

Although I am a big fan of Sen. Webb, even I realize he has some flaws. He comes off as a bit intense and prickly, and he’s not the best campaigner. Well, you are probably the best campaigner since Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, so you don’t need any help in that area. You will need to have a heart to heart with Sen. Webb about not going too far off the reservation. But choosing him will also show that you aren’t afraid to have strong personalities in your Administration. When he criticizes the Bush – McCain bunch for their foreign policy missteps, he’ll be taken seriously.

I’m no fan of Dick Cheney, but I think it was a masterstroke for GWB to choose him as his running mate. In the 2000 campaign, Bush’s biggest negative was that he was perceived as a lightweight (correctly, as we now know). Choosing Cheney, a longtime DC insider and perceived hero of the first Gulf War largely fixed all that. That decision was one of the few good ones that GWB made. Don’t be afraid to follow his example this one time.

I hope you’ll accept this recommendation in the spirit with which it is given. Best of luck to you.

Retrospective Mudslinging

[The following is a response to an op-ed article that appeared on page A9 of the Harrisburg Partiot-News on Monday, June 2, 2008. The article is reprinted below, with credit to the Patriot-News and pennlive.com.]

I read Robert F. Weil’s article on the Carter administration in the June 2, 2007 edition of the Patriot-News. My initial reaction was one of bewilderment. Had I just been transported back to 1981? Why would someone write an article castigating an administration that ended over 27 years ago? More importantly, why would the Patriot-News devote valuable space on its editorial pages to such an article? It took some time for me to puzzle out why Mr. Weil wrote the article. I still can’t figure out why the P-N printed it.

The Carter Administration came in with lots of promise, but even Democrats will admit that it stumbled badly in some areas. But that is such old news!! What exactly is the point of rehashing old failures in the 1970s? Mr. Weil’s motivation seems to be that if he throws mud on an underachieving past Democratic President, that will take away some of the glare from the current one.

Yes, the budget deficits were unacceptably high under Carter. But the fact is that most of our national debt was run up on the watch of two alleged conservatives, Ronald Reagan and the current Administration. Carter was a piker by comparison. And, despite what Mr. Weil says, the only major step towards peace in the Middle East happened as a direct result of the efforts of the Carter Administration. Sadat and Begin themselves said that the Camp David Accords would never have happened without the repeated direct intervention and supervision of Jimmy Carter. If these Accords were so meaningless, why is there still peace between Egypt and Israel almost 30 year later, and why have three subsequent Republican administrations achieved nothing of consequence there since?

No amount of retrospective mudslinging by Mr. Weil should divert our attention from the monumental failures of the past seven years. We were taken to war under false pretenses despite ample evidence that there was no justification for invading Iraq. Even Bush the Elder’s advisors expressed apprehensions both before and after the fact. The Administration estimated that the war would cost about $50 billion with slight loss of life. Instead, thus far the current estimates of the total cost range in the trillions and we have tens of thousands of killed and injured American men and women. On the domestic side, this President preached fiscal responsibility while outdoing even Reagan in adding to the national debt. That leaves out other offenses such as torturing prisoners and suppressing scientific evidence of global warming

Mr. Weil and his friend in the White House had better start building houses and running for the Nobel Peace Prize now. They’ve got an incredible legacy of shame to divert attention from. I guess I understand why George W. Bush’s apologists believe they need to start covering up his legacy now. But I don’t understand why the Patriot-News decided to give them such a prominent forum.

AS I SEE IT ROBERT F. WEIL

Here's what actually occurred under Carter

Monday, June 02, 2008

Hardly a month passes without former President Jimmy Carter labeling the current administra tion a failure, or acting as a political free agent that contradicts U.S. policy. This calls for a closer look at the Georgia peanut farmer's tenure as our 39th president.

When elected in 1976, Carter blasted Gerald Ford's administration for failing to control inflation and stem unemployment. But by the time Carter was voted out of office by weary Americans, things were very much worse indeed. Inflation had nearly tripled from 4.8 percent in 1977 to more than 13 percent in 1980. Interest rates had soared to peacetime highs of 20 percent, nearly quadruple the 5.4 percent he inherited. All this came at a bad time for the eight million, or 7.7 percent, of Americans out of work.

While pledging on the campaign trail to eliminate deficits, which he trumpeted as a "national disgrace," he took a federal budget deficit of $30 billion in 1977 and doubled that to $60 billion in 1980, the largest deficit in relation to Gross Domestic Product of any prior president.

His economic policies were so out of joint they prompted economist Arthur Okun, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, to create the infamous "Misery Index." Tying inflation to unemployment, as well as other leading economic indicators, Carter achieved a score of just over 16, the highest of any president in this nation's history (compared with President Bush's average of just under 8).

Carter blamed his own policy failures on "national malaise," a phrase Ronald Reagan deftly used to make Carter just one of seven presidents to fail a re-election bid.

On the international front, Carter fared no better. He negotiated with a ruling military junta in Haiti, despite human rights groups roundly condemning its atrocities. Today, Haiti remains an impoverished Caribbean nation with few civil rights. North Korea, known even then for its savage dictatorship, gained entry to the United Nations during Carter's administration, something it failed to accomplish during the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Even his supposed crowning achievement, the Camp David Accord of 1979, was initiated not by Carter, but rather by Egypt's forward-thinking statesman Anwar Sadat who, in 1977, suggested meetings in formal correspondence with Israeli Prime Minster Menachem Begin. Today, there remains no lasting truce in the Middle East despite Israel accepting the accord mandate that it hand back the Sinai Peninsula it had captured during the unprovoked Six Day War of 1967.

When Carter left office in 1981, the Soviets were making war in Afghanistan, Americans had been held hostage for 444 days in Iran, and national morale was at an all-time low. His botched hostage rescue attempt in 1980 was too hastily put into action to install proper air filters on the eight helicopters for the desert environment, allowing sand to suffocate their engines, crashing three and killing eight American servicemen. The effort lacked sufficient planning or air power to ever have succeeded, as determined by a congressional investigation that revealed "a surprising level of negligence."

Carter could learn something from former President George H.W. Bush, who never once spoke out during the Clinton administration despite Whitewater, FBI Filegate, Vince Fostergate, Monicagate, Pardongate, Troopergate, Hillary's ultra-secretive health care initiative, renting the Lincoln bedroom, Jennifer Flowers, giving up on Bin Laden, and numerous other missteps. CARTER WAS A tragically flawed politician who has become a liberal media darling due to his ongoing condemnation of the great American experiment. In a world where hating America and its wealth and freedom is heralded as a badge of honor, he supplies the very words vitriolic leaders of enemy nations use against us daily. Carter should stick to building houses through Habitat for Humanity, for it is there that he does this great nation, which he brought to its economic knees, the most benefit.

ROBERT F. WEIL writes from Derry Twp.