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Opinion
Reece Terry, publisher
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Friday, July 3, 2015
Corinth, Miss.
Trump: The anti-politician At the declaration by Donald Trump that he is a candidate for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, media elites of left and right reacted with amusement, anger and disgust. Pat Though he has been a hugeBuchanan ly successful builder-businessman, far more successful than, Columnist say, Carly Fiorina, who has been received respectfully, our resident elites refuse to take Trump seriously. They should. Not because he will be nominated, but because the Trump constituency will represent a vote of no confidence in the Beltway ruling class of politicians and press. Votes for Trump will be votes to repudiate that class, whole and entire, and dump it onto the ash heap of history. Votes for Trump will be votes to reject a regime run by Bushes and Clintons that plunged us into unnecessary wars, cannot secure our borders, and negotiates trade deals that produced the largest trade deficits known to man. A vote for Trump is a vote to say that both parties have failed America. The first book in Arthur Schlesinger’s trilogy about FDR’s ascent to power was “The Crisis of the Old Order.” That title is relevant to our time. For there is today a crisis of the regime in America – a crisis of confidence, a crisis of competence, a crisis of legitimacy. People are agitating for the overthrow of the old order and a new deal for America. For there is a palpable sense that the game is rigged against Middle America and for the benefit of insiders who grow rich and fat not by making things or building things, but by manipulating money. Americans differentiate the wealth of a Henry Ford and a Bill Gates from that of the undeserving rich whose hedge fund fortunes can exceed the GDP of nations. Trump says America is becoming a “dumping ground” for mass immigration from the failed states of the Third World, that Mexico is not “sending us her best and finest,” that China is stealing American jobs, that invading Iraq was a blunder. Politically incorrect and socially insensitive certainly, but is he entirely wrong? Was not the Iraq war a disaster for which our foreign policy priesthood and journalistacolytes never paid the price that would be exacted in other societies, were thousands of soldiers to die and tens of thousands wounded and maimed in so predictable a blunder? Is it not true that among the millions of illegal immigrants who have broken into our country the great majority has illegitimacy rates, delinquency rates, dropout rates, drug use rates, crime rates, and incarceration rates far higher than native-born Americans? Is Trump wrong on this, or simply wrong to bring it up? There are precedents in U.S. history for outsiders – Norman Thomas and Henry Wallace on the left, George Wallace and Ross Perot on the right – to enter the presidential lists. And across the pond a similar crisis of the old order is calling forth new people and new parties. As in America, dominant parties like the Tories and Labour in Britain are losing loyalists to the “a-plague-on-both-your-houses” dissident parties. This endless proliferation of parties, like the welcome being given to Trump, testifies to the new reality: Everywhere, including here, old parties are losing the people in whose name they presume to speak. And the specter of Republicans, who just won an historic victory by promising to do battle against President Obama, colluding with Obama to surrender Congress’ right to amend trade treaties and sign on to a TransPacific Partnership pact. If Trump wants to stake his claim as a different kind of Republican, he will go to Washington and pound the Boehner-McConnell Congress until it gives up on Obamatrade and fast track. (Daily Corinthian columnist Pat Buchanan is an American conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster.)
Prayer for today Lord, forbid that I should overcast my life with intentions, and neglect to put in the deeds. May I not be satisfied to spend my days in being merely occupied, but live to learn and work. May I not be dismayed over what I might have been, but with all my might do what I can now. Amen.
A verse to share “And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.” — Daniel 2:44
How Bill Clinton duped the State Department BY DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN Columnists
In 2011, Bill Clinton had a problem. He had already figured out how to parlay his reputation into income by giving speeches. But, now, with his wife serving as secretary of state and a Democrat in the White House, he wanted to take things to the next level and actually solicit relationships with major companies and foreign governments. He envisioned a network of corporate and foreign clients who would give him speaking fees, generate consulting income, and give to his Foundation, whose assets and income he could use as he wished. But to realize this grand vision, he needed an intermediary that would get clients and nurture the web he envisioned. So, working through his top aide and protege, Doug Band, he set up Teneo. Band, for his part, realized this was the way to cash in on the relationship with his boss. But Doug and Bill faced a problem. They needed the approval of the State Department Ethics Office that President Obama had made Hillary set up to monitor the business dealings of her peripatetic husband. So they scrubbed the application. Band’s role as a principal of Teneo was omitted and he was identified just as the Clinton aide who submitted the application. The real purpose of the new
company was hidden and the application claimed it was only designed “to study geopolitical, economic and social trends.” In fact, it was a deal to hire Bill using his name and relationship with Hillary to attract global corporate and government clients. In return, Teneo paid him handsomely, solicited donations for the Clinton Foundation and set up lucrative speaking engagements for Bill. Win-win for Teneo and Clinton. He’d get them clients; they’d get him speaking gigs. Team Teneo desperately wanted Bill Clinton to head its advisory board -- so it could hold out the former president and husband of the secretary of state as part of its team. For its part, Teneo planned to tell corporations and governments about how to fashion a positive relationship with the U.S. government and the State Department to get what they wanted. As Teneo itself described the company’s mission: “In the U.S., we use our deep relationships to provide strategic counsel and help clients navigate policy debates in Washington and state capitals as they look to find support, amplification and clarity around the issues that they care about.” Who better to do so than the former president and current husband of the secretary? But Teneo couldn’t tell the ethics officers that this was the real substance
of the deal. The big red flag was out there in plain view for the ethics police to see: For the first time in two years and hundreds of submissions to the ethics board, this application came directly from Doug Band and not from the normal channels at the Clinton Foundation. And, again, for the first time, the request was not copied to the Clinton Foundation, but only to Cheryl Mills. The inner circle was keeping things tight. But the State Department missed that one completely. And, according to documents released to Judicial Watch, the State dupes never raised a question as to who was running Teneo and how Clinton would function. Had they done so, they would have discovered that Band’s other partner was Declan Kelly. As a kind of precursor to Teneo, Hillary had appointed Kelly to the newly created job as the State Department’s Special Economic Envoy to Ireland. A major donor, supporter and financial bundler for Hillary, the job put Kelly in touch with corporations in and out of Ireland on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Translation: He networked for future clients. Now he was leaving the State Department to do the same thing for Teneo. But that conflict of interest eluded the State Department ethics dummies too. In fact, his role begs the question of why the State
Department would appoint an Irish citizen as its “economic envoy” to Ireland? Why would we even have an economic envoy to Ireland? The answer is simple - because the Clintons saw the future value -- for them. The ethics police never asked exactly what Clinton would be doing for Teneo. They just rubber-stamped the request. But Bill made clear exactly what was going on when he announced that, the next year, that he had “changed his relationship” with Teneo. “Because of the invaluable help I continue to receive with my business relationships and speaking engagements, as well as with CGI and other philanthropic activities, like the Ireland investment conference, I felt that I should be paying them, not the other way around.” And that valuable help has been seen in his overseas and corporate speaking engagements and the millions given to the Foundation. Bill Clinton had the deepest of relationships in the U.S. and around the globe and perfectly fit Teneo’s needs. A match made in heaven. And no worries about the State Department. (Dick Morris, former advisor to the Clinton administration, is a commentator and writer. He is also a columnist for the New York Post and The Hill. His wife, Eileen McGann is an attorney and consultant.)
President Obama makes odd choices Is the world back to where it was around the year 1800? One could come to that conclusion after reading British historian John Darwin’s recent book “After Tamerlane,” which assesses the rises and falls of empires after the death in 1405 of the famously bloodthirsty Muslim Mongol monarch. – From his Central Asian base, Tamerlane conquered Persia and lands from Egypt to India, destroying captured cities and piling up enormous piles of skulls. His fame has endured, from Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan play to the first name of the slain Boston Marathon bomber. Darwin’s perspective is worldwide, with as much emphasis on East Asia, South Asia, the Islamic world and Russia as on Western Europe and its American offshoots. He argues that from the 1400s to about 1800, China, India and the Islamic world were about as economically and technologically advanced and culturally sophisticated as Europe. In this view, European traders and armies played
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only a small, mostly offshore role beyond their homelands. European dominance Michael started not Barone with Christopher CoColumnist lumbus and Vasco da Gama but when the British East India Company started conquering India and North American settlers started moving west of the Appalachians. Today you could make the argument that the major regions of the world are reverting to the balance that prevailed until the 19th century, when Europe and the United States suddenly started dominating the world. That’s certainly the view of China’s leaders and, as far as one can judge, of the Chinese people. China was riven by civil wars and foreign interventions between the Taiping Rebellion in 1850, and the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Its surging economic growth since then and its increasing military might, in this view, have
simply restored it to the eminence it enjoyed at the time of the Qianlong emperor’s death in 1799. President Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” is an attempt to cabin in China’s power without establishing a NATO-like military alliance – impossible because of distrust between Japan and its neighbors. The TransPacific trade agreement is an attempt to bind China’s pro-American neighbors together and limit China’s influence. Meanwhile, Europe increasingly resembles its situation before 1800, with much local prosperity but not much clout beyond its borders. It is threatened from the east by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which has absorbed much of Ukraine and threatens NATO members Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The big difference between the world balance in 1800 and today is, of course, the United States. The young U.S. was different, fighting the Barbary pirates and entering the China trade. It had built the world’s largest and most creative economy
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by 1900, to the point that exhausted European powers begged it to take the lead role in economics and politics in the years after World War I. Americans declined that invitation but took it up after World War II, in what seemed still a Europe-centric world, in the confidence that they could make it better – and with notable success in Western Europe and Japan. Today administration leaders on trade and defense are trying to follow that example. But the president seems to lack that confidence and, facing a world that resembles 1800 more than it does 1945, reaches out to Iran’s mullahs and the Castro brothers while disrespecting many of America’s friends. Curious responses to a difficult challenge. (Daily Corinthian columnist Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.)
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