Calls at 3 am

Hillary asks who do you want to answer a call at 3:00 am when there is a dangerous crisis facing the country? I am at a complete and utter loss to think of a single reason to answer that question with the name Hillary Clinton. You would hope that a president would be able to respond quickly to changed circumstances and surprises. Yet Hillary constantly is unprepared to deal with the unexpected developments. Whenever anyone challenges her, whether the insurance companies in the 1990s or Barack Obama in the current campaign, she becomes indignant and unable to respond effectively. In both situations (the two times in her public life she was put in charge), she was constantly outmaneuvered and defeated by her opponents. When things go wrong, she responds by complaints, self-pity and emotional outbursts. Compare how John McCain kept soldiering on when his campaign was thought to be dead in the water last Fall. Clinton may be more moderate than Obama but the though of her in the White House is much more frightening. I hope next week any danger of that situation occurring will be over.

WFB

I started reading National Review in high school. The first time I opened it I was horrified and offended but it was addictive. I become an avid reader. After I discovered Firing Line, I became addicted to that. It was on Sunday afternoons on the public TV stations. When I first started watching it was an hour. Later, it was cut to a half an hour. In the early 90's when I was in law school at GWU, Buckley had one of his Firing Line debates on the campus. After the debate, I hung around to try to get a closer look at the great man. Another student came up to me and asked me to take a picture with a disposable camera of him and Buckley. Buckley readily agreed to have his picture taken and when I raised the disposable camera to take the photo, he said, "I love those things. They are the epitome of disposable consumerism." (or something like that). To this day, I read National Review On-line on a daily basis.

My brush with the great William F. Buckley Jr may not be much but it's something I wil always remember. I've read his magazine for over 20 years and continue to be addicted to its internet version. He was a great man who influenced a huge number of people and helped found a movement that has changed the country for the better. I'm not able to be as eloquent as the many writers who have written tributes today but I wanted to make my own modest contribution. RIP, WFB. Thank you.

Rudy or Hillary?

The biggest question in the 2008 presidential campaign is which was the most incompetent? Hillary Clinton's or Rudy Giuliani's? Both had big leads in national polls at the end of 2007. Rudy of course did much worse - he never won a single primary while Hillary won a number of big states. However, there was always a big question of whether Rudy was conservative enough to compete for the Republican nomination while Hillary was always the presumptive nominee of the Democrats. Both had disastrous strategies of skipping smaller contests and concentrating on a few big states. Both relied on their past careers rather than focusing on the future. Hillary's campaign theme was particularly fraudulent - she claimed to be ready on "day one" but she proved she was completely unready for the campaign (even though she had been planning for it ever since she and Bill left the White House in 2001). She ran her campaign so incompetently that it is deeply in debt despite raising over $100 million. The newspapers are full of stories of small vendors not being paid by the Clinton campaign while Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald get millions.

It always seemed to me that Rudy's heart wasn't in this presidential race. He was slow to get in and never seemed as passionate as when he was running for mayor. Hillary however clearly wanted to win badly. She just never imagined that anyone could beat her. It may be sexist and unfair to call her shrill but how else to describe her latest ranting about Barack's malings. She says that in the next debate his "behavior" will be at issue. She sounds like a nagging wife or mother. Who's going to vote for someone like that?

Heil Hillary

Hillary is becoming more and more unhinged. Here she attacks Barack Obama for having the audacity to criticize her health care plan. He does not have "the right" to attack her for having a universal health care plan because Democrats should not attack each other over "Harry Truman's dream." The main difference between Obama and Clinton is that Clinton wants to force everyone in the country to get health care insurance and to penalize them if they don't. Thus, not only does she want to deny the American citizen freedom to make their own choices about health care but she is saying that is illegitimate for anyone to criticize her for doing so. It's as if she is trying to prove the thesis of Jonah Goldberg's recent book, Liberal Fascism. Plus, she is starting to develop kind of a split personality. The other day at the debate, she gets all emotional and said how honored she was to be there with Barack Obama. Then she says he ought to be ashamed of himself for using Karl Rove like tactics (and accuses him of plagiarism). Its becoming apparent what kind of unhinged autocrat she would try to be as president.

Ron Paul for President!

Today I voted in the Virginia primary. I was torn between voting for Barack Obama in the Democratic primary or Ron Paul in the Republican primary. A few months ago, the two candidates I most favored were Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson. They seemed to me to be people who would govern in a practical yet conservative manner. I was impressed with Rudy's performance as mayor of New York where he was able to keep a lid on spending and cut taxes in one of the most liberal places in America. Fred was a consistent conservative who emphasized the need to reform entitlement programs before they bankrupt the country. Unfortunately neither made it to the Virginia primary. I'm not ready to support John McCain because I still am upset of his pushing of campaign finance reforms. His bill was a big-government monstrosity that blatantly violated the first amendment. A vote for Ron Paul is a statement of principle that I want the Republican party to move in a more libertarian direction and to once again stand for small government and lower taxes in a meaningful way.

I was tempted however by Barack Obama. However, this temptation was mainly a negative one. I want Obama to win in order to block Hillary Clinton from coming any where near the White House. On a few substantive issues, Barack is superior than Clinton in my opinion. He opposes the mandating everyone to buy health insurance and the five year interest rate freeze on mortgages. On these issues he is standing for freedom against heavy government intervention in the marketplace. However, on the whole, his program is clearly a big-government left-wing one. Larry Kudlow last night went through his tax proposals and showed how he would raise taxes significantly - doubling the capital gains tax, for example. So, while I still hope he beats Clinton and prevents the dragon lady from winning the nomination of a major party, I couldn't bring myself to vote for him. If a Democrat is destined to win this year, I would prefer it be him than her, but, as a Republican, I am not going to vote for it to happen.