Although President Barack Obama came into office with a great deal of good will in his column, he has squandered it fiercely over the past nine months; and if there has been any one thing that has spent this capital with would-be well-wishers, it has been the heavy-handed, aggressive tactics often associated with Chicago politicians. From his adopted home town, the president brought several Chicagoans into the White House, including Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who is famously brutal in his treatment of those who cross him. Historically, Chicago politicians have been famous for the rough and tumble tactics associated with the city’s machine politics. Pressuring opponents with not-so-veiled threats of cutting off access and livelihood, character assassination, and, failing all else, strong arm tactics by bought-off union thugs and police—all of these have been part of the Chicago Way.

Recently, the Obama administration not only declared war on the FOX Network, but it escalated the war by attempting to deny FOX the same access to the White House as other networks. Earlier this week, the administration told the other four networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN that only they would be part of the pool allowed to interview Kenneth Feinberg, the White House “Pay Czar,” who recently made news by declaring his intent to take back pay from financial executives.

The tricky part of this bargain was that while it offered to give the networks that remained in the pool increased exclusivity, this came at the price of their complicity in the exclusion of FOX. As journalists trying to hold on to some semblance of objectivity, they would have had to join the administration’s partisan vendetta against a news organization that has been embarrassing the administration throughout the summer by reporting on cynical statements and other indiscretions of various administration appointees. (FOX’s criticism might seem a lot less fair if the administration had not tacitly agreed by accepting the resignations of at least two of the appointees.*)

But while the mainstream media had been awfully tolerant of the administration’s complaints about negative media attention (sometimes inexplicably directed toward the media in general as if the mainstream media had been as critical as FOX), it was forced to react when the White House finally overplayed its hand. The networks balked, declaring that if FOX is excluded, then no one will conduct the interview with Feinberg. The networks saw where this is headed. The administration is trying to isolate and ostracize its enemies. Apparently, they hoped that other members of the broadcast industry would help them peel FOX off from the herd. The networks, however, realized that if each of them did not stand up for FOX, then if one of them has a story in the future that the White House does not like, then the same process of exclusion could occur and by then there would be no one left to stand up for them.

The historical event that seems most similar is the 1937 Judiciary Reorganization Bill whereby the otherwise popular President Franklin Roosevelt earned widespread opposition by trying to add three extra justices to the Supreme Court just because the court at the time was not giving him the decisions that he wanted. Most Americans protested this blatant attempt to game the system for political gain. Similarly, the attempt by the Obama administration to eliminate the news organization that has asked the most embarrassing questions, was recognized by the rest of the news media for what it is: an attempt to eliminate criticism of the government, even though criticism is one of the most sacred duties of journalists.

* Yosi Sergant was communications director for the National Endowment for the Arts until he got caught commissioning artists to do political propaganda assignments. Before him, Green Jobs Czar Van Jones resigned after FOX featured statements in which he turned the environmental issue into a racial one by blaming white people for pollution. FOX also noted Jones’s membership in an explicitly communist organization, Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), which existed from 1994 to 2002. Jones additionally had ties to the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). He also signed a 9/11 Truth Movement petition, supporting the view that the 9/11 attacks were staged by the U.S. government.

Interestingly, an early purge of STORM left only members who admired the late Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong (Jones was among those who stayed), someone that a couple of other administration appointees, including Manufacturing Czar Ron Bloom, cannot seem to keep themselves from quoting. FOX has highlighted not only Bloom’s propensity for quoting communists but also frank statements that seem to indicate that management of the American economic system has been entrusted to someone who has nothing but contempt for it: Bloom thinks that the free market is a “joke” to be conflated with a “free lunch” and that “gaming the system” is a standard practice of free market capitalism. (My own view is that the free market is a pretty good idea that we might want to try someday, but, in the meantime, if there is any gaming of the system going on—and there certainly is—it is the result of the kind of anti-free market policies that Bloom and others in the administration whole-heartedly support.)

Another White House appointee in the Education Department, Kevin Jennings, once made a comment praising the late Harry Hay, an outspoken member of the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Anything else that Jennings, a gay activist, might have done could be written off as merely controversial, but praising a spokesman for NAMBLA seems beyond the pale, especially for someone tasked with setting school safety policy as Jennings has been.

The whole tenor of the administration is such that these appointees are representative of a radicalism throughout the administration that is rather unprecedented. If previous administrations have brought about some melding of government and industry, the present administration champions remarkable increases in federal power and influence without any regard for the consequences. In his essay “On Socialism,” John Stuart Mill suggested that while gradual and experimental socialism made sense, the upending of whole countries to put them on a socialist footing almost over night promised only to make the most people miserable in the short-term and to make the French Revolution appear mild by comparison.

The Obama administration has taken advantage of an economic crisis—in which their party’s members in the Congress were, in fact, complicit—to take the country far too fast into an entirely different economic system from the one we are used to. From an economy in which there were still vestiges of a free market to one in which there will truly be nothing but useless vestiges. That the Obama administration wants to play hard ball with its critics—to silence them by any means necessary—is not a comforting sign that the coming new national order intended by the administration will be wearing a smiley face.

On the other hand, there is an increasingly good chance that the administration will lose its majority in Congress next year. The last two years of the Obama administration might be impotent. If so, the administration might implode rather than expand. The question is, how does the end game play out, and then what will come after Obama?

Each of these pairs of actors' sounds way too much alike:

Linda Hunt* and the late Burgess Meredith**

Michael Gladis*** and Jonathan Frakes****

*Currently seen on "NCIS: Los Angeles"

**The Penguin on the '60s TV series, "Batman"

**The oft bearded young ad man on "Mad Men"

****The oft bearded first officer on "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

When you debate with liberals, you need to clear up their misconceptions as to what the debate is about.

It is not that we agree that government control of health care is a good thing and that those who want it are nice and generous while those who oppose it are mean and do not want people in need to have this good thing.

No, it is that we disagree fundamentally about whether government control of health care is a good thing in the first place.

Those who favor government controlled health care believe that it will lead to more and better health care for everyone while those who oppose it believe that it will lead to less and worse health care for everyone. We are both compassionate but we have different ideas about what compassion entails.

The universal payer advocates (who include Barack Obama -see my post "About Nobody" on September 28) say “everybody in, nobody out.” To anyone who believes that government control of health care will lead to heaven on earth, this sounds like a wonderful promise. But to those who believe that it will lead to hell on earth, this slogan sounds more like a terrible threat.

At the heart of this conflict of visions are differing ideas about the effect government intervention has on the economy. Advocates of feel-good liberalism assume that government intervention is always good and has no adverse effects on the economic well being of people. They think government action is disconnected and neutral toward productivity, that tightening control on the economy makes businessmen honest and not public officials corrupt. They essentially think that if seven crows are sitting on a fence, and if someone shoots one of them, there will still be six crows sitting on the fence; it does not occur to feel-good liberals that government action can have adverse consequences that reduce incentives for economic activity. For example, that government control of health care might discourage the best doctors from staying in their profession. Or that outlawing bonuses or profits or increasing business taxes might encourage businessmen to reduce their business activities including the hiring of new employees.

Quotations that get it and give it:

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others." Ayn Rand

“As a matter of fact, so far as this legalized theft is concerned, I think I would be more happy with a thief taking my money rather than a congressman. You see, a thief will take your money and be on his way. A congressman will take your money, and then stand in front of you and bore you with the reasons why you should be happy about his taking your money. That's the difference between a thief and a congressman.” Walter Williams

“Helping your fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable, but under only one circumstance -- that is, when you reach into your own pocket to help your fellow man in need, that is praiseworthy and laudable. When you reach into somebody else’s pockets to help your fellow man in need, that is despicable and worthy of condemnation." Walter Williams

“Once you agree to give the government this huge amount of power, it's like opening the floodgates. When you open the floodgates, you can't tell the water where to go. And so if you give the government enough power to, quote, ‘create social justice’, you've given them enough power to make life miserable for millions of people.” Thomas Sowell

As far as the so-called mainstream media is concerned, when someone criticizes President Barack Obama (but not former President George W. Bush) he or she is treated the same as a child molester. Wait, that was before Roman Polanski. Now they’re treated worse than a child molester.

But it would seem that what is bad for the goose is good for the gander. For example, TV Guide, which is either mainstream media or wants to be (the publication more than qualifies as “deluded media” –see my previous post), included an item in Ingela Ratledge's "Watercooler" column (October 12, 2009) about former Republican Congressman Tom DeLay’s appearance on “Dancing With the Stars,” gratuitously referring to DeLay as "a tightass." I am not familiar enough with the man’s personal reputation to know if he is considered a tightass (Has anyone ever gone public and suggested this?) or whether TV Guide just thinks that all “red-state rumps” (to quote the article) are tight, but this seems to be a completely gratuitous insult directed at a man who is politically down and out.

I do not think deluded media types realize it when they are engaged in over-the-top, vicious insults. If someone is a Republican, the kid gloves come off; if they are a Democrat, then it’s time to wear a double pair of extra-soft gloves. The item was followed by another that took Whoopie Goldberg to task for spinning Polanski's rape of a thirteen-year-old into a lesser charge of "not rape-rape," but this item did not direct any vitriol toward Goldberg who is said to have merely spoken "unwisely." She can still be redeemed whereas no Republican can ever be. But I think that 1) DeLay seems to be countering the tightass charge just by being a sport and appearing on an entertainment program, and 2) there are lots of Republicans who are not tightasses. It might shock you that Patrick J. Buchanan comes to my mind as an example of a Republican who is decidedly not a tightass. Not the first person who came to mind, but the first nationally known Republican politician (or former Republican and former pol).

Let me tell the story that made his name leap to mind. A few years ago, I was watching Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Da Ali G Show” in which the British comedian impersonated a white man who wants to be black and travels the English-speaking world interviewing the famous and not-so-famous. The contrast was stunning between his interview of CBS ex-journalist Andy Rooney (he was once a real journalist, believe it or not, but that was many decades ago) and that of Buchanan. Rooney bought Ali G's act and concluded that he was dealing with an ignoramus and a waste of time. In a tirade, Rooney threw both Baron Cohen and his own dignity out of his office.

When Baron Cohen then interviewed Buchanan, the former pol astutely realized that Ali G is a joke and began laughing. When Baron Cohen, as G, took it for granted that Buchanan was going to be president someday, Buchanan laughed and said, “They’re never going to let me be president.” Buchanan then persuaded G to lend him his interview notes and read them out loud, trying as best he could to imitate the otherwise inimitable Ali G delivery.

I have never been a supporter of Pat Buchanan’s politics, but his stock as a human being went up a bit that day. “Respek,” as Ali G might say.

* * *

Speaking of making cruel fun of a mediocre president (the phrase is P.J. O’Rourke’s description of his career arc as a commentator spanning from the presidency of Richard Nixon to that of Bill Clinton—a time-limited description he made in the 1990s that could now be superceded), the online linguistics journal “Snippets” has an article in its July issue by Bridget Copley and Heidi Harley in which they give sample sentences such as “Obama made it rain last Tuesday.” Part of their point is that this is one of those sentences that seems grammatically correct but is nevertheless illogical. I just wonder, given the prevalence of Obama-mania among academics, whether or not the authors’ fellow academics might look at this example and say, “That’s not so impossible.”

We are not devolving, America, we are returning to the earlier, glory days when America was more partisan than it has been until recently. Centuries ago, you could read the Republican newspapers, someone else could read the Democrat newspapers, and bias was on parade. The only differences today are that the media is increasingly electronic, and while conservative media knows what it is, the liberal media still fancies itself "objective" and “mainstream,” even though they are steadily being marginalized by a loss of viewers and readers.

To read, watch or listen to the deluded media is painful. They get nothing right especially when they rail against the conservative media. For example, in the recent flap over Chicago’s loss of the Olympics, some deluded media pundits proclaimed that the main message was that Republicans "celebrated" the loss. This is wrong on a couple of counts, most of all because it is not the Republican politicians or party functionaries but conservative talk show hosts that were being referrenced. Actual Republican politicians and party functionaries were more diplomatic and, indeed, mostly silent on the matter. Secondly, it is a deliberate distortion to suggest that the thrust of conservative criticism is to celebrate the loss. Rather, what most conservative pundits have been getting at is that the participation of President Barack Obama in the Olympic bid suggests several things rotten in Denmark that have nothing to do with whether anybody is glad Chicago did not win.

1) The president embarrassed himself and his country by flying all the way to Copenhagen and speaking personally to the International Olympic Committee without any assurance ahead of time that Chicago would win.
2) The president’s plea sounded hollow and self-serving, yet he and others seem not to accept that he as well as Chicago were rejected. (If they do accept that, they think it is because the president is black and not because of his character.)
3) The president wasted fuel in flying two jets to Copenhagen carrying the First Lady and Oprah Winfrey as well as the president.
4) Certain Chicagoans were undoubtedly lobbying the president so that they could profit financially and politically from their city hosting the Olympics.

Those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. They do not so much imply joy over America's loss, but blame the president for that loss. That, of course, is not what the deluded media wants to acknowledge, even by denying it.