[Reprinted from Academic Questions.]

Reforming Our Universities:  The Campaign for an Academic Bill of Rights
Washington, DC:  Regnery
Publishing, Inc., 2010, 285
pp., $27.95 hardbound.

David Horowitz’s latest in a series of books on the corruption of higher education by radical politics is an account of a campaign that he began in 2003 to persuade universities to adopt an Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR). The ABOR is a brief declaration consisting of eight points based in large part on the venerable 1915 statement by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Its most important provisions are first, that both faculty hiring and grading of student work be based on merit alone without regard to political or religious beliefs, and second, that  “exposing students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses is a major responsibility of faculty.” These two provisions would effectively prevent instructors from using their courses for purposes of political indoctrination.

Horowitz’s earlier book Indoctrination U.: The Left’s War Against Academic Freedom, written in 2006, already included the text of the ABOR and a brief account of what had happened up to then, but he now gives us an updated and altogether fuller account of how the ABOR has fared.

Two previous books by Horowitz were attempts to document the extent of the problem of politicized higher education: One-Party Classroom (2009) and The Professors (2006). The former documented political indoctrination in one hundred-fifty courses on representative American campuses, the latter profiled one hundred professors who, though plainly political ideologues rather than scholars, hold prestigious posts on elite campuses. The aim of Horowitz’s new book is not to document the extent of the problem, but rather to chronicle his attempt to deal with it through the ABOR. Yet paradoxically, it ends up being the most convincing documentation yet of how serious the problem is, and it is his opponents who give us that documentation. The inevitable objection to The Professors and One-Party Classroom was that one hundred-fifty courses and one hundred professors constitute a small fraction of 1 percent of the total: how representative are they? There is a perfectly good answer to this objection. These cases are tolerated even after they become well-known, and are not corrected. Nevertheless, the idea that cherry-picking the worst cases doesn’t prove very much won’t easily go away.

What Horowitz’s ABOR campaign has done is to force the other side to declare itself. It says, in effect: very well, if the problem is really as insignificant as you say it is, you should have no trouble in subscribing to some very simple, innocuous language that says that hiring and grading should be free of political discrimination, and courses should carefully analyze complex issues rather than simplify them through omitting everything that might impede proselytizing for one side. Horowitz’s opponents faced a choice whether to accept or reject his language. In retrospect, one can easily see what their best move was.

Language close to that of the ABOR already exists in many places throughout the academy. The 1915 AAUP statement is incorporated by reference in the regulations of countless universities but is routinely flouted everywhere, because administrations are afraid to enforce it. It would have been easy enough to add the ABOR to these already existing statements, to go on ignoring all of them, and to keep insisting that there was not a problem. Horowitz’s opponents lost their heads and made a foolish strategic mistake: they attacked the ABOR with great ferocity. Rather like the shrewd old Zulu king in the classic movie Zulu, Horowitz had in effect drawn their fire so that it could be seen how much of it there was and where it would come from. And the fire came thick and fast from everywhere: from professional associations that represent almost all professors in a particular discipline like the Modern Language Association of America or the American Historical Association (AHA), from the American Civil Liberties Union and the AAUP, from unions and from the Democratic Party, as well as from individual legislators, faculty, and administrators.

The main argument against building the Park51 mosque adjacent to Ground Zero has been that its placement would be a lasting affront to the memory of the Americans who died at the hands of Muslim terrorists. And that argument is certainly sufficient by itself. But it is not the most important argument against a mosque in that location. To understand what is, we must remember what happened the last time we fought against suicide bombers, who, like their contemporary Muslim counterparts, were inspired by what they felt to be a divine mission.

In the Second World War, Japanese suicide bombers posed a huge threat to allied ships. One pilot could take out a heavily fortified ship by crashing a plane stuffed with explosives into its deck, a result that would have taken a huge investment of lives and material to achieve by conventional means. The individual pilot faced certain death, but he accepted that fate because he believed that the Gods were with him and with Japan.  The word used to describe this tactic (“kamikaze”) refers to an event in Japanese history where the country was saved from invasion and conquest by Kubla Khan. A sudden typhoon scattered the Khan’s fleet. The Japanese saw the wind as an intervention by their Gods, and so in WWII they called their suicide pilots another divine wind, that is, the kamikaze.

The sense that the Gods are with you must be kept strong enough in the minds of suicide pilots to override the normal instinct for self-preservation, but that means that defeats and victories alike are leveraged. A great victory is not just something that advances your cause—equally important to the suicide bomber is that it strongly reinforces his sense that the Gods are with him; for did not the victory show that the Gods were smiling on Japan? This was also the basis of the Japanese soldier’s fanatical zeal toward fighting to the death, with surrender not being an honorable option.

The enormously destructive bombing of Britain and Germany only brought out the stubbornness of the population, yet the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagakasi quickly broke the Japanese will to fight, even though their fighting spirit had been unmatched throughout the war. Why? Something is certainly due to the scope of the weapon used, but more important was the leveraging effect that defeats and victories have on people with a sense of divine mission. Catastrophes on the scale of Hiroshima could not be reconciled with the notion that the Gods were with Japan. The sense of a divine mission simply vanished. Japan not only surrendered (hitherto unthinkable for any Japanese soldier), but actually changed direction so completely that it soon became a peaceful democratic nation. By contrast, Germany only surrendered when virtually the entire nation had been destroyed.

This week’s primary races, in which grassroots conservative candidates had a strong showing, suggest that the political energy is on the Republican side. Yet it is too soon to predict that 2010 will be a replay of 1994, when a voter backlash helped Republicans recapture control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Consider the May 18th showdown for John Murtha’s vacated congressional seat, which was disappointing for Republicans. In some polls, Tim Burns had been ahead of Mark Critz, and Critz’s 7 point win was bound to provoke a good deal of agonized post mortem analysis. But a crucial and sobering fact eluded everybody: PA12 showed that the decisive factor in the big GOP congressional gains of 1994 is missing this year, and will remain so until the party does something to remedy that.

Rush Limbaugh tried to cheer Republicans up by pointing to the 2 to 1 Democrat registration edge in the district, and assured them that they don’t need to win 2 to 1 districts to still win big in November. But John MCain beat Obama in that district in 2008—where shall Republicans be in the fall if they can’t hold what McCain held while Obama was winning the election? Another argument from Rush was that Critz had run like a Republican, but that one ought not to have appealed to a man who has been saying for years (correctly) that if people are given a choice between a quasi-Democrat (i.e., a liberal Republican) and a Democrat, they’ll naturally opt for the real thing. Burns was the real thing here, but that didn’t help him.

Dick Morris made a more plausible case when he said that in a low turnout election, Democrats came out in bigger numbers because they had been trying to get Arlen Specter out of his Senate seat for years, and now at last had the opportunity to finish him off. There is probably some truth in this, but unfortunately, it exposes a more important truth: Democrats were motivated to turn out but Republicans were not. The real question is why, and the answer casts a very long shadow over the fall elections. The factor which, according to Morris, successfully motivated Democrats was a trivial one: getting even with Specter. Compare this to what might have motivated Republicans: the next six months will be a dangerous time for the country. Democratic leaders know that their ability to implement their agenda may soon be gone, and so in the coming months they will try to ram through every destructive measure they can. Since they have the votes, only one thing will stop them: fear. Specifically, the fear on the part of scores of Democrats that their votes will end their careers. That fear has been stoked by the results of statewide elections in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts, but statewide electorates are so large that they can never be skewed to one side as much as local congressional districts, which means that even in the era of Scott Brown’s win, large local party registration differences can still make a district feel safe. And so a Republican win in a heavily Democrat district would greatly increase fear, and that fear would make the GOP safer in the next six months.

Why didn’t this powerful motive for Republicans to go to the polls outweigh the trivial one that motivated Democrats? The ground should have been fertile: Obama’s approval numbers in the district were much lower than the national average. But Republican voters were not motivated by this powerful case because Republican leaders were not able to make it effectively. They lacked the energy and focus needed to inspire their side to vote, and so, squandered their advantage. That is a troubling lesson of the PA12 result.

There has been much discussion of the resemblance between this fall and 1994, when the GOP made large gains to take the House. The constant theme of the comparisons has been the similarity between HillaryCare and ObamaCare as sources of deep disillusion with the sitting President, and this similarity is widely assumed to be enough to make for a comparable Republican sweep this fall. But this thinking ignores a crucial factor that was present in 1994 and is not present this year: highly effective, focused and energetic leadership.

In 1994, Newt Gingrich wasn’t content to let people vote against the incumbent Democrats—he gave them something to vote for: the Contract with America. The Contract gave the campaign a clear focus, and it projected drive and energy. Newt was a compelling figure in front of the TV cameras: charismatic, full of ideas, exuding confidence and competence. What would the 1994 election have been like without dynamic, focused leadership pushing a clearly delineated positive agenda? It might well have been like PA12 this year, and that is why Republicans need to take that result seriously if they are to avoid the same outcome this fall.

In the House, energy, ideas, and strategic thought come from Paul Ryan (the Roadmap) and Eric Cantor, but not from the wooden, unimaginative John Boehner. In the Senate, waves are made by the likes of Jon Kyl and Jim DeMint, but not by the passive Mitch McConnell. Neither Boehner nor McConnell has the charisma or the focus needed to dominate a TV screen. Nor do they have strategic judgment–remember them on Scozzafava or amnesty? Where is this Republican leadership’s equivalent of a Contract with America for the fall election? In PA12, voters were asked to vote against the Pelosi-Reed agenda, but they were not given anything to vote for. Both Boehner and McConnell seem to think they can coast to victory on a wave of anti-Obama sentiment, but that’s not what produced 1994’s big win. I have seen this slogan for the fall elections: Boehner for Speaker. That’s a sure way to put GOP voters to sleep.

Spokesmen for liberal ideas are everywhere in the media, but Republicans are given few opportunities to make their case, and so must make sure that what chances they have are used to maximum effect. That’s why an ability to use TV to explain conservative ideas quickly and easily in crisp, forceful language is indispensable in GOP leaders. In 1994, the GOP seemed for once to understand that, and passed over more senior figures to anoint a natural leader in Newt Gingrich. But since then, it has gone back to its old ways, installing people with seniority but without ideas or energy, all but guaranteeing defeat with uncharismatic, lifeless figures like Denny Hastert and Bob Dole.

At the moment, tea party energy occasionally supplies some of what is missing in the leadership, but that can never be more than sporadic. Ordinary people can sustain their extraordinary efforts for only so long before the demands of their own lives reassert themselves. It’s not surprising that tea party energy suddenly disappeared in PA12. In any case, energy without the kind of focus provided by effective leadership can be dangerous, as the quirky Rand Paul’s nomination showed. Tea parties are a symptom of what is wrong with the GOP, not an antidote to it.

The real lesson of PA12 is this:  if Republicans were hoping for a repeat of 1994 this fall, then they had better prepare themselves for a disappointment—unless and until the GOP understands how it won in 1994, and accordingly moves to correct the disastrous leadership deficit that was on clear display in PA12. If the party persists in approaching its best opportunity in many years with its present passive, uninspired and uninspiring leadership, it will thoroughly deserve that old label: the stupid party.

[This article is reprinted from MindingtheCampus.com.]

All across the country there were demonstrations on March 4 by students (and some faculty) against cuts in higher education funding, but inevitably attention focused on California, where the modern genre originated in 1964. I joined the University of California faculty in 1966 and so have watched a good many of them, but have never seen one less impressive that this year’s. In 1964 there was focus and clarity. This one was brain-dead. The former idealism and sense of purpose had degenerated into a self-serving demand for more money at a time when both state and university are broke, and one in eight California workers is unemployed. The elite intellectuals of the university community might have been expected to offer us insight into how this problem arose, and realistic measures for dealing with it. But all that was on offer was this: get more money and give it to us. Californians witnessing this must have wondered whether the money they were already providing was well spent where there was so little evidence of productive thought.

The content vacuum with filled with the standby language of past demonstrations, and so there was much talk of “the struggle,” and of “oppression,” and—of course—of racism. “We are all students of color now” said Berkeley’s Professor Ananya Roy, and a student proclaimed that this crisis represented “structural racism.” (Why not global warming too?) Berkeley’s Chancellor Birgeneau called the demonstrations “the best of our tradition of effective civil action.” Neither Chancellors nor demonstrations are what they used to be. The nostalgia for the good old days surfaced again in efforts to shut the campus down by blocking the entrance of UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that the old “shut it down” cry was somewhat misplaced when keeping it fully open was what the present demonstration was about, but then this was not an occasion when anyone seemed to have any idea of what they were trying to achieve.

One group at UCLA stumbled into the truth, though it was a truth they did not understand. At Bruin Plaza a crowd chanted “Who’s got the power? We’ve got the power.” In its context this was just another slogan of a mindless day, but the reality is that those people do indeed have the power, and routinely use it in a way that makes them the author of their own troubles. Let me explain.

Unemployment in California is still rising. It just went up from 12.3 to 12.5%, nearly three points above an already bad national average. This horrendous figure is the source of California’s budget problem. The huge loss of tax revenue is compounded by greatly increased unemployment outlays. If we look at the few other states that have unemployment figures well above the national average, there are obvious explanations. Michigan is at 14.6 because employment in its major industry (automobiles) has collapsed. Nevada, at 13.0, is dependent on discretionary cash at a time when there isn’t any. But California is too big to be dominated by one industry, and its plight can only be explained by the state’s having grossly mismanaged its affairs.

In 2007 Raymond Keating formulated a Small Business Survival Index, which is a composite of various aspects of the climate for business in a particular state: business and personal taxes, regulations, mandates, and so on. In that index California ranked 49 among the 50 states. Rhode Island ranked just above California, and its unemployment rate is 12.7. At the bottom of the Index is D.C., and its unemployment rate is 12.1.

In the component parts of the SBSI index, California ranks worst of 51 (including D.C.) on top personal tax rates, worst on top capital gains tax rates, 42 on corporate taxes, 43 on health insurance mandates, 46 on electric utility costs, 47 on workman’s compensation costs, rock bottom again on state gas taxes, 45 on state and local government five year spending trends, and 47 on state and local per capita government spending. It also ranks 49 among the states on the US Economic freedom index, and it has the highest state sales tax rate too: where some states have an income tax but no sales tax, and others have a sales tax but no income tax, California has both, AND it has the highest rates in both.

In short, California is a disaster for business. The state has piled up so many taxes, regulations and mandates that businesses are leaving the state. Just this week I learned that a spare part order for my Lennox fireplace is delayed because Lennox is moving this division of its business to Tennessee. Wealthy individuals are also fleeing the state to avoid the country’s highest tax bracket. When both wealth and wealth creation leave the state, tax revenues leave with them.

How has this happened? As everyone knows by now, California has a dysfunctional legislature. Already in 2003—well before the current national crisis, and when the national unemployment rate was only 5.9%—California was bankrupt, and spending was so out of control that a Governor was recalled. The legislature enacts every politically correct whim that comes into its head, loading on one mandate and regulation after another. Cap and Trade could not pass nationally, but the California legislature proudly passed its job-killing global warming bill.

That is why the state now has a budget crisis of staggering proportions, and why university students are seeing those large fee hikes. But why is the California legislature so irresponsible, not to say goofy? Well, California is extremely rich in state university campuses: the UC and CSUC systems alone amount to 33 campuses, about a third of them mega-campuses of 30-35 thousand students, with another 10 around 20,000. The mega-campuses completely dominate the Assembly districts they are in, and their large concentrations of students and faculty skew the district electorate not just to the left, but to the devoutly politically correct but hopelessly unrealistic left. Virtually all of them routinely send Democrats to Sacramento. College towns with more modest sized campuses play their part too, but mega-campuses make their districts so one-sided that in the last election UC Berkeley’s Assembly seat had no election even though it was vacant: the Democratic nominee still ran unopposed. Where there is real competition between the parties the two sides keep each other honest and realistic, but when Assembly seats are so inevitably left that there is no contest, there is nothing to stop the side that has automatic electability from sliding into fantasy. Those districts provide the margin that allows an immature leftism that has lost contact with reality to control the state legislature and ruin the business climate of the state.

The irony here really cries out for attention: a large state university system needs a free market economy that hums along in top gear so that the revenue needed to support it can be generated. But California’s two unusually well developed state university systems provide enormous local voting power in many Assembly districts for a bitterly anti-capitalist ideology that sabotages the California economy. The campuses are shooting themselves in the foot. The power that those students and faculty chanted about is indeed theirs, and if they used it to elect sensible assemblymen and state senators their problems would be solved by the healthy business climate that would result. The votes that they actually cast are the source of their troubles.

Only one idea for solving the funding crisis was floated on March 4. It was to repeal the state’s requirement that taxes can only be raised by a two thirds vote, so that taxes can be raised yet again and more money made available to the campuses. In other words, let’s make the funding crisis even worse, by driving out of California even more wealth and wealth creating capacity, and raising the unemployment level even more. “California is not a tax-heavy state,” said Assemblyman Joe Coto, whose office is right next door to San Jose State University, which enrolls 31,000 students. And that raises the question: how much longer will the California citizenry want to support a system of higher education that keeps its legislature stuck on stupid? It’s not a question for this state alone.

John Ellis is President of the California Association of Scholars, and a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz

There is a story about legendary chess grandmaster Aaron Nimzowitsch, who detested cigar smoke. In the great New York tournament of 1927 his opponent Milan Vidmar took out his cigar case and began to fiddle with it. Nimzowitsch became agitated and complained to the tournament director. But he is not smoking, the director replied. “He is threatening to!” shouted the distraught Nimzowitsch. Vidmar got the better of Nimzowitsch in New York. The threat was enough.

The GOP could learn a valuable lesson from Dr. Vidmar and protect the country from a disaster in the making. If the Senate Democrats force passage of ObamaCare through “reconciliation,” what will individual Democrat Senators have done? First, they will have ignored the clear and consistent message of the American people in poll after poll. In some states those who oppose the bill outnumber those in favor by 20 points or more. Second, they will have taken the unprecedented step of passing major social legislation without bipartisan support—in fact without a single opposition party vote. Third, they will have violated Senate rules which allow only a limited and technical role for reconciliation, not a use that to all intents and purposes abolishes the Senate’s 60 vote rule for substantive policy issues.

It is reasonable to conclude that this represents a series of morally indefensible actions on the part of the Senators involved. On the first point, they have treated the opinion of the people who elected them with contempt. On the second point, they have acted irresponsibly. On the third point they have cheated when the stakes were so huge that faithful adherence to the rules was essential. Take the three points together, and you have despicable behavior, behavior unworthy of a U.S. Senator.

Elected representatives have been recalled for much less than this. California’s Governor Gray Davis was recalled simply for failing to halt runaway legislative spending, and that doesn’t come close to the immorality of jamming through legislation of massive national import with parliamentary tricks and ruthless partisanship over the strong objection of the American people. Recalls are as a rule both difficult and dangerous. They easily create a backlash in favor of the incumbent as the electorate becomes irritated with a process that seems to question its judgment in having elected the individual in the first place. In 1967, the attempt to recall Frank Church probably strengthened his position for reelection, which he won by a large margin. But given the mood of the country with respect to ObamaCare, that danger is now minimal.

What of the difficulty of the process? The answer to this is that there are severe limits to what can be done, but that there are nonetheless some real opportunities. Only eighteen states provide for recall of U.S. Senators: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin. (The question whether state recall statutes are legally enforceable for federal offices is not completely clear, but I’ll return to that in a moment.) That is 18 states, so a total of 36 senators are potentially subject to recall. Of these, 11 are at the moment Republicans, which leaves us with 25. A recall would be pointless for 7 of those, because they are up for reelection this year. Among the remaining 18, only Kent Conrad has said that “Reconciliation cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform.” We are thus left with 17 senators in 12 states: Alaska’s Begich; California’s Feinstein; Colorado’s Udall; Louisiana’s Landrieu; Michigan’s Levin and Stabenow; Minnesota’s Franken and Klobuchar; Montana’s Baucus and Tester; New Jersey’s Lautenberg and Menendez; Oregon’s Merkley; Rhode Island’s Reed and Whitehouse; Washington’s Cantwell; Wisconsin’s Kohl.

All but four of these are states carried by Gore, Kerry and Obama. Anything is possible in a climate in which a Republican took Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, but it would certainly be hard to get a blue state to recall a Democrat. However, the chances are quite good in the three states carried by both George W Bush and McCain: Alaska, Louisiana and Montana. And then there is Colorado, which Bush carried twice.

If we look at the mood in these four states, it’s clear that their five Democratic Senators are all vulnerable. In Alaska, Mark Begich’s approval rating has fallen to 35% according to a recent Public Policy Polling poll. In Colorado, Mark Udall’s approval numbers had dropped into minus territory already by April of 2009, and that was a time when Obama’s numbers were still high. But when you add to this the fact that Obama’s current polling in Colorado is worse than his national average, that the incumbent Senate Democrat up for reelection this year is now behind by 14 points, and that in an especially ominous poll Coloradans say they trust the judgment of the American people more than their political leaders by 74 to 11 percent, this looks to be fertile ground for a recall. In Louisiana Mary Landrieu’s polls plummeted following the Louisiana purchase, and the state’s incumbent Republican Senator is 24 points up in his reelection campaign this year. In Montana, a recent poll showed a huge margin against ObamaCare (74 to 26) and Max Baucus’ approval rating instantly dropped 20 points to 44% because of his role in promoting it. If Baucus or Jon Tester vote for ObamaCare by reconciliation in this climate of opinion in their state they can expect a firestorm.

But states vary in the difficulty of mounting a recall: some make it easy, while in others the hurdles are almost impossible to overcome. Fortunately, Alaska, Colorado and Montana are among the easiest. In Alaska and Colorado, the number of signatures needed to qualify a recall petition is 25% of the vote received in the last election by the person to be recalled. That means roughly 38,000 signatures for Begich and 50,000 for Udall—easily doable. In Louisiana and Montana the number is a percentage of the total eligible voters (not those who actually voted) in the last election. In Louisiana, that percentage is one third, which means 800,000 signatures, and that would be hard to do. But in Montana the percentage is a mere 10%, so it would take only 75,000 to recall Tester or Baucus, and that is feasible. Recall efforts would create the kind of national attention that would generate more than enough money to finance the collecting of signatures.

To be sure, there are many ways in which recall drives can fail. There is a school of legal thought which holds that a recall interferes with the federally determined term of six years, and is thus unconstitutional. I don’t find this convincing, but some people I respect do. The least we can say is that it is not clear what the U.S. Supreme Court would do. The outcome could well be that U.S. Senators can’t be recalled after all—we simply don’t know. But back to Dr Vidmar: just take out the cigar case and fiddle with it, and see what happens. The threat is a powerful one. If tomorrow the state Republican chairs in these four states were to announce that any vote for ObamaCare by reconciliation would trigger a drive to recall the Senator who cast it, these five would have to decide whether they wanted to take the risk.

At the very least, the recall drive would be embarrassing to them, and would provide a forum in which the full extent of their betrayal of their constituents, of responsible government, and of Senate rules and traditions could be spelled out, discussed, publicized, denounced. And in the worst case scenario, the Supreme Court might decide that those state statutes are not in fact unconstitutional. It might hold, say, that the six year term only specifies a limit; after all, Scott Brown was not elected to a six year term, and nobody thinks that unconstitutional. Or it may hold that a recall from a six year term is an action that cancels the term completely, and does not change the definition of a full term. My hunch is that that is what the court would do, because it makes the most sense. But we just don’t know—and the point is that the Senators can’t know either. We can be sure that they don’t really want to cast this vote. The announcement that they will face a recall effort could easily be enough to tip them over the edge. Go to it, Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana, and Montana.

John Ellis is President of the California Association of Scholars, and a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

When politicians are caught out in lies, their supporters often resort to the old cliché: all politicians lie. But that is itself a lie: most don’t. Even among those who do, there are enormous differences in the importance and frequency of the lies. And it is surely now clear that this nation has a far from routine problem in the scale and regularity of President Obama’s lying.

When politicians lie they are usually trying to avoid political damage, or to make themselves look good. Bill Clinton lied (and got himself impeached) to save himself from embarrassment about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Hillary Clinton lied about being under fire in Bosnia to enhance her non-existent foreign affairs profile. Richard Nixon was forced from office because he lied to cover up his involvement in a political dirty trick. John Kerry lied about his Vietnam combat experience to blunt his anti-military reputation. But Barack Obama’s lies are far more corrosive and destructive, because they go the heart of legislation and governance, and so seriously undermine trust in government. His lies generally take a specific form: they attempt to persuade people to vote for him or his policies by categorically assuring them that they need not have the anxieties that they have been expressing. The lies say, essentially: trust me, support what I want, and I promise that what you fear will never happen. But in every case it soon becomes clear either that he knew perfectly well that what the public feared would in fact happen, or that he was giving a firm assurance that he was in no position to give, or that he had no intention of following through on his promise.

The accumulated weight of Obama’s deceit is overwhelming:

* During his campaign for the presidency and since, Obama repeatedly assured us that he would protect Medicare against cuts; but he now presses for passage of bills that include savage cuts in Medicare.

* To obtain passage of his first stimulus bill, Obama assured us that 90% of the jobs created would be in the private sector; but as he well knew, most of them were to be in the public sector.

* Early in the health care debate, Obama assured us that he had not said that he favored a single payer system; but he was on record as having said exactly that.

* Obama gave primary voters a firm assurance that if he became the nominee of the Democratic party he would (unlike Hillary Clinton) abide by the campaign finance limits of public funding; but as soon as he became the party’s nominee, he reneged on that pledge.

* During the presidential campaign Obama criticized the presence of former lobbyists in the Bush administration and solemnly assured us that he would appoint no lobbyists to his administration; but once elected he proceeded to appoint even more lobbyists than his predecessors.

* Obama criticized the size of George Bush’s deficit and promised to stop deficit spending if elected; but he has already quadrupled the size of the deficit he objected to and recklessly continues new federal spending in the trillions.

* When campaigning Obama criticized bills before the congress that were too long for anyone to be able to read and promised to stop that; but the bills he has been backing throughout his first year are infinitely longer (2000+ pages) than the ones he criticized.

* Candidate Obama promised an end to the corruption of earmarks and pork, but in the bills he has supported this year there have been more and bigger earmarks than ever before.

* Candidate Obama promised us that CIA personnel involved in the interrogation of terrorists would not be prosecuted; but his administration is now doing exactly that.

* Obama assured a joint session of Congress that the health bill he supported (pre-Stupak) would not provide public funding for abortions; but bitter resistance on the part of House Democrats to inclusion of language to that effect soon proved that it did.

* Candidate Obama promised that he would make sure that there was always enough time for the public to read legislation before it was enacted; but he has done exactly the opposite, repeatedly pressing for even faster passage of even longer bills.

* Candidate Obama met fears that he would be a tax and spend liberal by promising, emphatically and repeatedly, that those earning under $200,000 would see no increase in their taxes of any kind; but he now urges passage of a healthcare bill that breaks that pledge in many different ways, and his unrestrained increase in federal spending makes more tax increases inevitable.

* Candidate Obama promised bipartisanship and an end to partisan bickering; but  in a display of especially ruthless partisanship his allies have shut Republicans out of all key meetings on his health care initiative, with the unprecedented result that domestic legislation of historic importance garnered not a single Republican vote in the Senate.

* Candidate Obama criticized his opponent’s plan to tax employer paid healthcare benefits, and promised he would not tax them; but the bill he now backs will do just that.

* Obama had promised that he would not sign a healthcare bill that would add one dime to the federal deficit; but the bill he now backs adds trillions in new federal spending, offset only by new sources of revenue that are both uncertain and more properly seen as offsetting the already existing deficit.

* Obama coerced congress into passing his stimulus bill by promising that if it were passed unemployment could go no higher then 8%; but unemployment is now at 10%, and he could not possibly have had good reason to exclude that possibility.

* Obama promised that his cap and trade legislation will create jobs; but its massive tax increases will certainly hobble the economy and destroy jobs, while green jobs in significant numbers can at best be hoped for, but never promised.

* Obama has repeatedly assured the American people that if they like their current health plan they can keep it; but the House bill which he supported created huge incentives for employers to drop their coverage and shift their members to a public option.

* Obama has just as often assured the public that under his health plan everyone will be able to keep their current doctor; but many are certain to lose their doctors when ObamaCare’s large cuts in Medicare funding induce more doctors to withdraw from Medicare coverage, as they also would were employers to transfer patients to a public option to save money.

* Obama assured a joint session of Congress that his health plan would not fund illegal aliens; but his allies had been busy voting down amendments to that effect.  (This was the point of Joe Wilson’s outburst.)

* Obama claimed that Caterpillar’s CEO had told him that Caterpillar would begin hiring again as a result of the stimulus bill; but that individual immediately announced that he had said no such thing, and that Caterpillar would in fact be laying off more workers.

* Candidate Obama promised that Guantanamo would be closed by January 1, 2010; but it is still open.

* Candidate Obama promised that his administration (unlike his predecessor’s) would be so transparent that TV cameras (C-Span) would be there for key deliberations; but an unprecedented level of secrecy prevails as the final stages of Obamacare are negotiated behind closed doors and kept so secret that even the Senate majority whip admitted that he had no idea what was going on.  Requests for Obama to honor the promise of C-Span cameras are being ignored.

* To gain traction for his attempt to return a would-be socialist dictator in Honduras to power, Obama claimed that he had been overthrown in an illegal coup;  but the congressional research service pointed out correctly that ex-President Zelaya had been removed for constitutionally sufficient cause by legal and constitutional means.

* Obama claims that he wants a public option only to increase choice and competition; but the House bill would clearly reduce choice both by squeezing unsubsidized private health plans out of the market, and by setting rigid conditions on acceptable plans that would narrow available options.

* Candidate Obama claimed that violent radical Bill Ayers was just another guy in his neighborhood; but the record shows that the two had worked closely together.

* Obama assured us that his stimulus bill would create or save a million jobs; but he was claiming as fact what could never have been more than a wild (and highly improbable) guess, and his more recent attempts to justify that guess have been fraudulent.

* Obama assured us that his health plan would never ration care, or “pull the plug” on grandma; but the legislation he backs sets up panels to make crucial decisions on when to withhold care, and it makes such deep cuts in Medicare that rationing is inevitable.

* Obama now assures us that health insurance premiums will not go up if ObamaCare becomes law, insisting indignantly that people who say this have not read the bill; but the legislation forces insurers to cover preexisting conditions, which will compel them to raise premiums substantially.

This is an extraordinary record of serial mendacity. One or two instances might charitably be regarded as rash promises later regretted, or as the wishful thinking of someone who had not thought through the implications of what he was saying. But when it happens again and again—and my 30 instances are by no means exhaustive—only one judgment seems possible:  this is the record of a habitual, shameless liar, a man who will say anything to get what he wants. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, goes the old saying. But scores of times? How shameful is that for our society when this disgraceful record is never the subject of a reproachful editorial in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or CBS news? Richard Nixon was removed from office, and Bill Clinton impeached for a single lie. Who could look at Obama’s record without concluding that his lying is in a completely different league to theirs?

President Obama evidently believes that he can solve any problem with a speech.  But he really does not care whether what he says is true or not, nor does he feel any responsibility to honor the assurances and promises he makes.  As a result, this nation is now in a position where it cannot believe a word that he says, and that amounts to an unprecedented crisis of confidence in the Presidency. Democratic government will atrophy if we allow lying on this scale to count as the business as usual of politics. When will the press and the Congress hold him accountable?

[Editor's note: This article is reprinted from GOPUSA.com.]

No group has done more to promote the public funding of abortions than the Catholic bishops of America. That might well surprise them, flushed as they are with their success in making a deal in the House in which they supported passage of the Pelosi bill in exchange for an amendment barring public funding of abortions. But when you make a deal with people whose strategic goals are diametrically opposed to yours, you must be careful that what you get is not a temporary tactical retreat that can be reversed at any time, while what you have given is a huge and lasting strategic advantage.

That principle had already been illustrated plainly enough when Olympia Snowe helped to vote the Baucus bill out of committee because it ruled out the public option, which she opposed. Within days, Harry Reid had put the public option back in the bill that was now before the full Senate. Snowe had given a major boost to the momentum of ObamaCare by moving the bill on with bipartisan support, but the concession she thought she had secured was immediately cancelled. Who did most to boost the public option’s chances that week? Why, Olympia Snowe, whose gullibility had been cynically exploited by the Democrats.

The bishops had given a far greater boost to ObamaCare than had Snowe: they actually endorsed the bill, and the slim margin of its victory in the House might not have been there without them. But when questioned by John Boehner, Henry Waxman frankly admitted that there was no guarantee that the amendment would still be there as the bill progressed toward final passage. In other words, he and Pelosi had simply pocketed their priceless gain, and if they could betray the bishops, they would. But the bishops should not have needed to be told this. What Pelosi is aiming for is government-run health care. When all health care is government provided, how could anyone doubt that abortion services will be publicly funded, just like any other service?

Other groups have made the same short-sighted deals, in which they have either acquiesced in or actively supported the progress of ObamaCare in exchange for concessions that they believed would protect their particular interests. The AMA supported the bill in exchange for concessions that would reduce planned cuts in pay for doctors; insurance companies at one stage supported it because they thought they’d get more customers as more people were forced to buy insurance; drug companies supported it in exchange for concessions on drug price reductions. In every case, the Democrats had been able to exploit the gullible and get them to accelerate the momentum of a process whose ultimate goal is their ruin.

What none of them seemed able to grasp was that the strategic goal toward which Reid and Pelosi were relentlessly advancing was something that would inevitably remove all of the protections they thought they had negotiated for themselves. The subsidized public option that Pelosi and Reid want would inevitably drive private insurers out of business, leaving the government as sole provider of health care, including abortions. When that happens government will also control drug prices, as well as conditions of work and pay for doctors. How could private insurers and drug companies fail to see that the people driving this process loathe them and cannot wait to cut them and their “obscene” profits down to size? How could doctors fails to understand that no matter what assurances they are given to secure passage of the bill, their inevitable fate under government-run health care will be a higher workload and much reduced salaries?

The archetype of the suicidal short-sighted deal will always be Neville Chamberlain’s Munich pact with Hitler. What Chamberlain got was temporary and unreliable: a promise of no more territorial demands that could be reneged on at any time, from a man who already had a track record of reneging on promises. What he gave in return was a huge and permanent boost to Nazi strength and momentum: Czechoslovakia’s industry, raw materials and manpower. In September of 1938, not even the most dedicated and energetic Nazi did as much to propel Nazism forward as Chamberlain did.

But this is the kind of one-sided bargain that all of these groups have been making with ObamaCare: in exchange for assurances that are worthless, because they are fundamentally in conflict with the strategic goals of Pelosi and Reid, they have given a huge boost to something that must eventually result in their worst nightmare. Chamberlain’s wishful thinking would not allow him to see the power-mad glint in Hitler’s eye, and the same unwillingness to see that glint is at work in the health care debate. Appeasing a hungry monster never works: it grabs what it is offered, and immediately wants more, and more.

The bishops are unlikely to learn anything from the betrayal that Waxman openly admitted to. In the Senate, they will likely allow themselves to be paid off with the same debased coin that already proved itself worthless in the House. They will again be proud of getting an amendment that bars abortions just as they are lending their considerable weight to a process that will lead inexorably to the opposite result. And in so doing, they will have deflected attention from the real issues that waverers should have been unable to stomach: the massive addition to an already disastrous budget deficit, huge cost increases for heath care, and a public option that will degrade its quality. “Moderates” will think their moderation sufficiently proved by their vote for abortion funding restrictions, and contentedly vote for a destructive and extremist bill. And one day the bishops will wake up to find that all their muscle-flexing had only led to the very result that they had most feared.

The bishops, the insurers, the doctors, and the drug companies all need to grasp the rather simple fact that their own strategic goals are fundamentally in conflict with those of Pelosi and Reid, and that the public option is at the center of that conflict. For all of them, making deals that allow the public option bandwagon to gather speed is sheer folly. The only way in which they can genuinely protect their interests is by stopping it, now.

John Ellis is President of the California Association of Scholars, and a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

When the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Baucus bill’s $829 billion in new spending would be more than offset by large cuts in Medicare and new taxes, many observers were skeptical: how likely were those cuts and new taxes to materialize given the considerable political difficulties that enacting them would encounter? But while that skepticism was entirely justified, it missed a much more fundamental argument against the CBO’s scoring of Baucus, as well as the scoring it will likely do for the Reid and Pelosi bills.

The context within which all of this takes place is that Medicare is headed for insolvency, and that the nation is running a ruinously large deficit. Cuts in Medicare were always going to be needed to deal with that program’s looming bankruptcy, and the political difficulty of making them guaranteed that they could never be large enough to solve the problem. As to the deficit, a search for new sources of revenue was always on the cards, and there too the political difficulty of enacting tax increases would also rule out anything large enough to solve that problem. And so in a context of impending Medicare insolvency and a massive deficit, whatever Medicare cuts and new taxes might turn out to be politically feasible, they were already spoken for.

The Medicare funding crisis and the deficit have a prior claim on them, and for that reason they can’t be thought of as offsets to the Baucus bill’s spending at all. Baucus claimed them for his bill’s balance sheet, but the mere fact that he put them there doesn’t make it right to do so.

Think of it this way: imagine that your household is living beyond its means and has run up a very large debt. You think up some ways of cutting your household expenses and earning some more money so that you can accumulate cash to pay off your debt and begin to live within your budget.

But now your spouse sees that new pile of cash and wants to go out and buy a fancy new car with it. What Max Baucus is doing is exactly that: he’s blowing the cash we need to make Medicare solvent and pay down the deficit on even more entitlement spending. The bill that Nancy Pelosi unveiled today (November 29) does the same thing, and the CBO will probably score that one in the same misleading way too.

All that matters here is that the Baucus bill wants to spend nearly a trillion dollars more on a new entitlement while we can’t pay for the ones we have already on the books, and that it wants to add a very large sum (all $827 billion of it, and much more if, as always in the past, these estimates turn out to be too low) to a deficit that is already frightening. The Pelosi bill does much the same thing, as will Harry Reid’s bill. When we understand them in this way, all these bills are the height of fiscal irresponsibility, and if President Obama signs anything like them, his pledge not to increase the deficit by one dime will turn out to have been his biggest deception of the American people to date.