America’s political elite are dangerously out of touch
Just listen to the highly influential conservative commentator — and former defence hawk — Charles Krauthammer. A former speechwriter to Jimmy Carter’s vice-president Walter Mondale, Krauthammer quit the Democratic Party in the 1980s because he regarded it as cavalier about national defence. On Friday, Krauthammer published a column in the Washington Post urging Republicans to hang tough on the sequester.
What about defence? Krauthammer shrugged: That was the president’s problem, not the GOP’s: “As commander in chief, [Obama] must worry about indiscriminate Pentagon cuts that his own defence secretary calls catastrophic.”
This is no way to govern a great country. Actually, this is a mode of government by which a great country may rapidly cease to be a great country. A political elite obsessed with its own feuds and rivalries is ignoring genuine economic and security problems. Out of its own animosities and ignorance, it repeatedly has created utterly unnecessary crises that only aggravate America’s genuine problems.
Twice, the political elite averted the crisis at the last minute. Let’s hope they do the same this third time. And then the rest of America should ask: Isn’t it time to find leaders who see their job as making things better, not worse?
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Says David Frum?
Seriously?
Count to 10 on February 9, 2013 at 8:45 PM
David Frum, Kettle, Pot, Black…
SWalker on February 9, 2013 at 8:45 PM
Is this a joke?
forest on February 9, 2013 at 8:46 PM
Hey Frum. In this country we spell “defense” with an “s”.
NeoKong on February 9, 2013 at 8:47 PM
Ditto all three of you. Frumpy is such a clown.
Jaibones on February 9, 2013 at 8:48 PM
Said the dangerously out of touch member of America’s political elite.
vegconservative on February 9, 2013 at 8:49 PM
No, it is the Left who are out of touch – with reality!
OldEnglish on February 9, 2013 at 8:49 PM
We wuz ‘ere first!
OldEnglish on February 9, 2013 at 8:50 PM
He must be in his Betsy Frum persona today. Don’t worry, tomorrow he’ll be J Fitzgerald Frum, and on Monday Abraham Frum.
Limerick on February 9, 2013 at 8:52 PM
LOL…
d1carter on February 9, 2013 at 8:52 PM
at this point, what does it matter?
astonerii on February 9, 2013 at 8:53 PM
That really fits right in with “In time, this too will pass”.
Count to 10 on February 9, 2013 at 8:59 PM
hilarious, yes the public clamors for bigger deficits.
rob verdi on February 9, 2013 at 9:01 PM
Speak for yourself, butterboy.
Jeff Weimer on February 9, 2013 at 9:12 PM
Then you should be directing this at the authors of the sequester, and not the Republicans. They’re the ones that insisted the defence cuts be put in, at these levels, and then turned around and told the military directly, “there won’t be a sequester, so don’t worry about it” (I know this directly as I worked for the Navy in DC and that was the word from on high). It was their feuding obsession with the Republicans that caused them to insert that as a poison pill they thought would cause yet another cliffhanger (and here we are) and make the Republicans blink.
Jeff Weimer on February 9, 2013 at 9:17 PM
This doesn’t even make sense. The deficit isn’t shrinking. Is he talking about a reduction in baseline accounting? Amnesty and Obamacare are going to send the deficit skyrocketing. He seems desperate. It’s like the captain yelling at the Titanic to repair and right itself.
DFCtomm on February 9, 2013 at 9:20 PM
I wouldn’t be as concerned if they were simply out of touch.
No, they know exactly what’s going on.
davidk on February 9, 2013 at 9:21 PM
He’s distracting you. He’s talking about the rate, with an inflated baseline that includes $1T deficits against a budget baseline that was far more rational.
Jeff Weimer on February 9, 2013 at 9:33 PM
Its pretty sad that Frum picks on a TV pundit, rather than the Democrats, who are the actual actors in this contrived political drama,and who, as you say, decided to play a cynical political game with the whole process.
It’s like blaming a bad play on a critic who gives a bad review, rather than on the actual playwright and actors.
Frum = phony dilletante.
Dreadnought on February 9, 2013 at 10:25 PM
What about America’s Canadian political faux elite?
steebo77 on February 10, 2013 at 12:57 AM