2016

Secretariat of the GOP presidential race

BY LEROY GOLDMAN

Charlotte Observer 9-23-2015

Special to the Observer

We know Hillary Clinton believes America urgently needs a female president. And we know that she believes 2016 is the year. She’s right, and the only way we can be certain that she’s right is if the nominee of both parties is a woman. I believe the odds now favor that outcome – Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina.

Clinton remains the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination. But the GOP race is wide open.

The Reagan Presidential Library hosted the second GOP debate last week. Fifteen of the 16 GOP hopefuls duked it out in front of President Reagan’s Air Force One. It was high drama – funny at times, combative, substantive. Most importantly, it began the process of separating the field into winners and losers.

History teaches us that Republicans should win the White House next year. The American people usually turn the reins of power over to the other party after one party has had two terms in office. It happened in 1952, 1960, 1968, 1976, 2000, and 2008.

What threatens a GOP victory in 2016 is that it’s fractured right down the middle. Its two warring camps include the Establishment Republicans and their longstanding ties to the business community and the Insurgent Republicans with their ties to the Tea Party. These warring factions despise one another. It’s They distrust one another as much as they oppose Barack Obama and his policies. Look, for example, at the Insurgents’ efforts to depose House Speaker John Boehner and their counterproductive willingness to again shut down the federal government.

If the GOP fails to nominate someone who can bridge this chasm, it will fall short next year. It’s Hillary’s key to victory.

None of the GOP hopefuls has, as yet, demonstrated how he or she can not only bridge the divide that has torn the GOP in half, but also how to effectively reach out to Independents and minorities, especially in the swing states that will determine who wins.

That said, the recent debate has begun the winnowing process. Only six of the GOP hopefuls still have a presidential pulse post-debate. Three are primarily Establishment candidates: Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Marco Rubio. The other three are Insurgents: Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina.

Three of them, however, are walking dead, though they and their most ardent supporters have yet to realize it. Bush lacks the requisite fire in the belly, and he can’t change his last name. When Carson opens his mouth we realize that he is sincere, and hasn’t a clue how to master the levers of power in Washington. Trump is Carson absent the sincerity. Put a fork in them. They’re done.

Fiorina, however, has surprised to the upside in both GOP debates. In each debate she was the clear winner. She’s poised, confident, and she far outdistances all of her rivals in her grasp of both domestic and foreign policy issues. She is tenacious and, as a woman, will be able to confront Clinton in ways that no man could. If she taps either Rubio or Kasich as her running mate, she can heal the GOP and reach out to Independents and minorities.

In a light moment Jake Tapper, the debate’s moderator, asked each candidate to pick their Secret Service codename. Fiorina provocatively chose “Secretariat.” Secretariat was the thoroughbred who won the Triple Crown in 1973 by winning the Belmont Stakes in the fastest time ever and by an astonishing 31 lengths!

Put your money on Fiorina while the betting odds are still eye-poppingly attractive!

Goldman worked on Capitol Hill and at the National Institutes of Health. He has retired to Flat Rock and can be reached at:  EmailMe

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article36319368.html#storylink=cpy

The Shadow Always Welcomes Comments

Asheville Citizen-Times

LeRoy Goldman, GUEST COLUMNIST

September 4, 2015

Obama has destroyed the Democrats

By the time a president reaches the last couple of years in office, his attention inevitably turns to his legacy. A president’s legacy, whether good or ill, is built upon accomplishments, not rhetoric. Therefore, it’s not hard to identify what this president would point to as the legacy bookends of his eight years in office. At the front end is the enactment of Obamacare. At the back end is the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Presidential scholars, political pundits, and the American people will debate and disagree regarding the worthiness of both of these two monumental undertakings. You can be certain that when the Obama Presidential Library opens in Chicago it will make the case that healthcare was reformed by Obamacare, and the world was made safer by the Iran Nuclear Agreement. Alternatively, it’s entirely possible that the voters in 2016 and beyond will make the countervailing argument.

But regardless of history’s assessment of Obamacare and the Iran Nuclear Deal, there is another part of the Obama legacy that he won’t acknowledge and that is too little discussed. Obama has virtually destroyed the Democratic Party. And the Democrats, like lemmings, have been willing accomplices in their own demise.

It was opposition to Obamacare that produced the enormous gains the GOP made in 2010 and 2014. Rather than delaying health care reform in the face of an imploding economy in 2009, Obama chose to ram it through Congress with only the support of Democrats. It was a catastrophic blunder.

The numbers are staggering. In 2010, the GOP captured the House by gaining 63 seats. In 2014, they took control of the Senate. And the damage has been just as ruinous for the Democrats at the state level. The Republicans now have 31 governors and fully control 30 state legislatures.

In a recent column in Politico entitled, Democratic Blues, Jeff Greenfield says, “In fact, no president in modern times has presided over so disastrous a stretch for his party.”

Having painted himself into corner, it’s not surprising that President Obama basically chose to attempt to govern as if he were the only decision-maker. In his first Cabinet meeting in 2014 Obama said, “We’re not going to just be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need. I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone.”

There is no better current example of Obama’s go-it-alone, go-for-broke approach to governance than the Iran Nuclear Agreement now pending before Congress. It’s his foreign relation’s version of Obamacare. Not surprisingly, it has spawned the same kind of bitter partisan rancor on the Hill and across the nation as did Obamacare.

The Iran Nuclear Agreement aims to prevent or at least delay Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon. In addition, it lifts the severe sanctions on Iran that have been in place for years. The Obama Administration assumes that Iran will become less menacing and easier to deal with as a consequence of the Agreement. In fact, the day after the deal had been reached, the President falsely argued that the choices now facing this nation are to accept the deal or go to war. He said, “Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it’s resolved through force, through war.”

Virtually all Republicans on Capitol Hill and a majority of the American people as measured by national polls do not agree with President Obama’s assessment, and they do not agree with the tortured way the agreement is being presented to Congress so as to make it next to impossible for it to be rejected.

Instead of submitting the deal as a treaty that would have required a two-thirds vote in the Senate, it takes the form of an agreement. Congress will almost certainly reject the agreement, but Obama will veto their disapproval and Congress will not have the votes to override his veto.

Former Harvard Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz, puts Obama’s scheme in proper perspective. He says, “if the majority of Americans continue to oppose the deal, it will ultimately be rejected...An agreement, as distinguished from a treaty does not have the force of law. It can simply be abrogated by any future president.”

Obama has decimated the Democratic Party. What remains is a geriatric joke: Hillary 69, Sanders 74, Biden 74, Kerry 73, Warren 66, Reid 75, and Pelosi 75. A political party, unwilling to challenge its president when necessary, deserves its ignominious fate.

LeRoy Goldman lives in Flat Rock. He was a member of the federal government’s senior executive service for many years.

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America needs a 21st- century trust buster 

 The Charlotte Observer

BY LEROY GOLDMAN

Special to the ObserverSeptember 2, 2015

At the dawn of the 20th century this nation was in trouble. The vast majority of its citizens lived in desperate conditions. Vast amounts of wealth were concentrated in the hands of a few individuals such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan. Although the Sherman Antitrust Act had been enacted in 1890, it had been little used to challenge the use of trusts by men like these to amass incredible wealth. But when President McKinley was assassinated in 1901 and Teddy Roosevelt became president, things changed.

Roosevelt went on to become one of our greatest presidents in part because he directed his attorney general to challenge the Northern Securities Company, a railroad trust established by Rockefeller and Morgan. Roosevelt did not oppose all trusts, only bad ones. Roosevelt believed the Northern Securities was a monopoly that sought to control all railroading from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest. When the case reached the Supreme Court, Roosevelt won 5-4. Roosevelt had become a “Trust Buster.”

A century later the nation is again in trouble, and there is another trust that needs busting. It’s a trust that is both bad and good. It’s enormous in size and scope. Its activities penetrate every corner of American life. It has the power to both self-finance and, when that is insufficient, to print money. Worst of all it is accountable to no one.

It is the federal government. It makes Northern Securities look lame by comparison. Its worthy actions need to be preserved. Its unworthy, unnecessary, or outdated actions need to be terminated. We need another Teddy Roosevelt.

The Constitution provides for the most direct way to deal with this problem through the Congress’ power of the purse. Ideally Congress would terminate funding for federal programs that are counterproductive, outdated or don’t work. But instead when bad things happen, the executive branch comes to Congress and says it needs more bureaucrats and more money to fix the problem. And Congress complies.

The only effective way to separate the wheat from the chaff is through major surgery.

Federal support for things like responding to natural disasters such as forest fires and hurricanes is essential. So too is provision for the national defense, but not for unneeded weapons systems. Care for Veterans is essential, but not by a socialized medical system that has killed veterans while serving itself. Medicare and Medicaid are vital, but not when it’s staffed by folks who are incapable or uninterested in accurately answering a telephone call. Tax collection is necessary, but not by an IRS willing to put politics in front of its mission.

The next president needs to do to the executive branch what Teddy Roosevelt did to Northern Securities – break it up. It would be best if both parties agreed on the necessity of this undertaking. Unfortunately, they don’t. The Democrats are the handmaidens of government growth. They see that growth as an appropriate way to bring about desirable social and economic change.

But among the Republicans, a rising star is Carly Fiorina. She does not miss an opportunity to address how she would reform the federal bureaucracy. Such an effort must emanate from the White House and include control over the appointment of every department’s undersecretary. That’s the person who actually manages the day-to-day affairs of each department. The effort must also attempt to reinstate the president’s power to impound, not spend, money appropriated by Congress.

If Fiorina ends up president, vice president, or the appointed Trust-Busting Tzarina of the next administration, the fat will be in the fire! It’s long overdue.

Goldman worked on Capitol Hill and at the National Institutes of Health. He has retired to Flat Rock and can be reached at:  EmailMe

The Shadow Welcomes Comments

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article33585882.html#storylink=cpy