White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

There Will Be a Short Delay with the Candidate’s Announcement

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Some of you were expecting me to announce my candidacy for president of the United States, along with the others who got all the headlines.

There have been a few problems. There are solutions, too. (How is that for a campaign zinger?)

There is the problem of my birth. I was, er, born in a foreign country with, er, un-American parents. I have to check with the Ted Cruz camp on that problem.

There is a money problem. At the moment, I have $138 in my current account. But that amount will swell, when my Social Security check comes in next week.

In the long term, I have a crafty, two-pronged approach to raise the billion or so dollars I will need for my campaign. My wife will set up a foundation, called the “Foreign Governments’ Friends Committee,” which will raise money like a Fourth of July flag.

Unlike one of my opponents, I will not beat about the bush on foreign campaign donations. I will take them all, see that they are properly laundered, and promise the donors all sorts of favorable treatment. I can renege later. Not a word, please.

Then there is crowd-sourcing. When my message gets out, I expect a Niagara Falls of money. I will go after the disaffected, unhappy people who hate all candidates. The nutters of the left and the right have lots of dough.

Here is a peek at other aspects of my program:

Bring back manufacturing (back story, by lowering the minimum wage, so that our labor is cheap).

Get tough with Iran. Any Iranian waiter found passing himself off as an Italian at a New York restaurant will get summary deportation.

Give China an ultimatum: Either you double the value of your currency, or millions of Americans will be forbidden to shop at Walmart.

In the Middle East, trust the dictators. We will support the most awful monsters in the time-honored way. If we could get Saddam Hussein out of the grave, I would go for it. Likewise Muammar al-Qaddafi. Call it “the strongman policy”: no messing about with uprisings.

I will be a tough guy supporting other tough guys. I will say to Vladimir Putin, when we are shirtless, “I don’t give a hoot about Ukraine. Take it. But I want you to invade China — just a little way. And crush ISIS. You know, the way you did Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the glory days.

That should take care of the world.

At home I will have the most flexible of policies, based on the latest polling. If you are in favor of abortion, tell Gallup and you will get them.

Want the Ten Commandments on the wall of the Capitol? No problem if you can produce a convincing poll, preferably written on stone tablets.

What is democracy but a craven pursuit of votes through polling? Go democratic all the way, I say.

Wait until you hear some of my appointments. How do you fancy Donald Trump for secretary of state? Here is someone who will appreciate my tough-guys-are-always-right policy.

Before I announce my candidacy, I will perfect my Israel strategy. I am leaning toward giving honorary citizenship to Benjamin Netanyahu, so that I can make him my national security adviser. Why should Congress claim Bibi as their own? I will have goodies to offer him that will beat whatever John Boehner and Mitch McConnell can do. For starters, how about a hard pass to the White House and a regular chance to be on the Sunday talk shows?

Darrell Issa is my choice for ambassador to Libya, in recognition of his Benghazi studies.

Finally, my coup de grace: immigration. Simple, no one will want to live here when I am in the White House. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Winds of Change in Washington?

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They are not a gale, not even a stiff breeze — more like a zephyr really — but there are winds of change stirring Washington. There are hints that when Republicans return from their travels and their time with constituents they will be ready for some righting of their ship, which has been listing heavily to starboard.

Over in Democratic circles there are hopes that President Obama, presumably buoyed by the fall of Tripoli, will tighten his grip on the helm and begin to assert himself in ways that his party has felt that he has been missing.

The Associated Press released the results of a new poll on Thursday that showed approval of Congress has dropped to 12 percent, down from 21 percent in June, before the ugly debate over raising the debt ceiling. The Associated Press-GfK poll taken earlier this month also showed that the Tea Party has lost public support, Republican House Speaker John Boehner is increasingly unpopular and that people are warming to the idea of not just cutting spending but also raising taxes, just as both parties prepare for another struggle with deficit reduction.

Stuff happens — and when stuff happens, the political dynamic is changed.

An earthquake and hurricane, for example, has convinced people along the East Coast the cutting the funding for the U.S. Geological Survey, as has been proposed, may not be so prudent. Likewise, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration might need full funding.

Enter states in economic shock. From Maine to California, they are bracing for the impact of federal grants drying up.

At least two Republican governors, who were out in front with austerity programs, are looking less sagacious.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican Party favorite, sacrificed a long-planned new tunnel into Manhattan on the altar of economic rectitude, just before it was becoming apparent that the only way government can really create jobs is through big infrastructure projects.

Farther south, in a burst of ideological zeal, Florida Gov. Rick Scott waved off federal stimulus funds for high-speed rail and other things. So the funds traveled up the coast to be plowed into road projects in Massachusetts, much to the joy of Democratic Sen. John Kerry who crows about his state's infrastructure progress. The wily presidential hopeful Texas Gov. Rick Perry denounced the stimulus package and then pocketed $14 billion for his state.

The lesson for those who thought that statesmanship lay in placating the well-intentioned but economically challenged Tea Party movement is that surgery with a machete is doomed to terrible results when a laser scalpel is needed.

Malcolm Muggeridge, the great British essayist and popular philosopher, wrote a prescient essay on the failures of reform. Of 12 major reforms, from the Russian Revolution to the ending of Tammany Hall political domination in New York, people who were supposed to benefit were left worse off.

The latter is an issue that Obama may want to ponder as his health care reforms are implemented. Without a public option to benchmark prices, he may have covered more Americans but, in so doing, allowed for prices to further escalate.

It is by the Republicans that the larger pressure for course correction is being felt. "No new taxes," increasingly sounds about as sophisticated as what spectators to the guillotining of French aristocrats chanted, "Off with their heads!"

The public wants government to do many and mysterious things, like invent the Internet, go to Mars, cure cancer, build better highways, and keep us safe at home and abroad. Whether we enunciate it or not, we want the government to look after us in areas of health, world stature, scientific discovery, defense, and food supply and safety. Business does not do those things, and even the most rugged of individualists cannot do them for themselves.

Ergo, we have to pay for those things and the credit card is maxed out.

Tax is back on the table, if not in fashion. Tax and judicious cuts in spending.

Members of Congress also read the poll numbers. At around 13 percent, their approval ratings do not make them feel good. Nobody likes to be told they are an incompetent bum, especially incompetent bums.

So for the first time there is some feeling that the super committee, which is set to tackle the deficit problem, may actually do something before Congress allows mandated cuts — the machete to start hacking.

Just a little more wind, and a grand bargain will be scented on it. Wet a finger and hold it up in September. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate