Last night another wave of voter disgust hit the Capitol Hill sands and swept more incumbents into the out-of-office ocean.<\/p>\n
Kentucky is part of this story. \u00a0Outsider Rand Paul, son of libertarian sensation Ron Paul, took the GOP nomination from the party establishment\u2019s nominee.<\/p>\n
The biggest news though came from Pennsylvania. \u00a0While Democrats held onto Congressman John Murtha\u2019s seat, an outsider businessman who was the GOP candidate came close in a district that should have been a cakewalk.<\/p>\n
More tellingly, Democratic primary voters rejected Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter, who had already been rejected so thoroughly in Republican primary polls that he switched parties months ago. \u00a0Specter took into the Democratic primaries President Obama\u2019s endorsement. In an ordinary year, this would have counted for a lot. \u00a0The president\u2019s Pennsylvania strength was a critical in 2008 to his national success. \u00a0Already some are saying that Specter\u2019s loss is another indication of Mr. Obama\u2019s fall from voter favor.<\/p>\n
That same message \u2013 fall from voter grace \u2013 was headlined even before the voting in the Washington Post<\/em> on Sunday. \u00a0The banner over a review of the newly released account of the president\u2019s first year in office, Jonathan Alter\u2019s The Promise<\/em>, bespoke of the newly received conventional wisdom: \u201cA gifted orator who can\u2019t make his point.\u201d<\/p>\n Journalists and political consultants like to talk about \u201cthe narrative,\u201d as if politics were a movie script and truth and fiction were indistinguishable. \u00a0The review presented the current insider-approved narrative on the Obama administration\u2019s first year: the president is paying a noble price for such unpopular actions as the economic stimulus package and multiple bailouts that saved the nation from a depression. \u00a0Meanwhile, we have mysteriously seen \u201cflagging efforts\u201d from the White House, \u201cto communicate [the president\u2019s] policies lucidly\u201d.<\/p>\n A reality check is in order here. \u00a0There is a lot you can say about the administration\u2019s economic policies. \u00a0Saving us from a depression is not among them. \u00a0If monetary theory means anything, the Federal Reserve\u2019s unprecedented run-up in the money supply between early September 2008 and Inauguration Day insured that we would come out of the downturn sometime between May and September 2009, which is what happened. \u00a0Federal Reserve actions in late 2008 and early 2009 were directly in line with Chairman Benjamin Bernanke\u2019s academic writings on how to respond to the kind of crisis we faced at the time. \u00a0The best that can be said for the stimulus package is that it gave the newly elected administration a way to claim credit for an outcome that was already largely written in stone.<\/p>\n But what about the \u201cflagging efforts to communicate\u2026 policies lucidly\u201d? \u00a0This is another key to the anti-Washington anger across the country this year, though not in the way Washington imagines.<\/p>\n For far from politics being a \u201cnarrative\u201d, it is, ultimately, a quest for reality \u2013 reality about economics, national security, and national norms. \u00a0When White House communications \u2013 or the communication of any public figure or institution \u2013 matches reality, it ultimately succeeds. \u00a0When it deviates too far, it fails. \u00a0Public anger this year has one cause: much of Washington \u2013 primarily but not only Democrats \u2013 has lost touch with reality.<\/p>\n The Tea Party attendees are only the most vocal element of an emerging consensus. \u00a0Despite slanders from the old order, that consensus has focused on a reality known to every banker and finance minister in the world \u2013 that the United States is spending at a rate and accumulating debt to levels that test the limits of Adam Smith\u2019s observation that \u201cthere is great deal of ruin in a nation.\u201d \u00a0Smith was reassuring a correspondent worried about the success of the American Revolution spelling the ruin of the United Kingdom, and Smith was, obviously, right to reassure the young man. \u00a0But the United States today is in a different place.<\/p>\n The president and his White House have spent the last year and a half ignoring the real limits on national finances and the clear Constitution limits set on the national government\u2019s power. \u00a0If their communications lack lucidity, it is because their actions defy this reality, and they cannot candidly explain them.<\/p>\n The conflict of Washington narrative and national reality is the driving force behind the president\u2019s incredible (for this time in a term) weakness in the polls, the outcomes to date in nominating conventions and primaries, and, indeed, all of American politics today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night another wave of voter disgust hit the Capitol Hill sands and swept more incumbents into the out-of-office ocean. Kentucky is part of this story. \u00a0Outsider Rand Paul, son of libertarian sensation Ron Paul, took the GOP nomination from the party establishment\u2019s nominee. The biggest news though came from Pennsylvania. \u00a0While Democrats held onto […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-commentary-general","tag-hugh-hewitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":643,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions\/643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}