Bush on Conservatism, Palin, Biden and Clinton

Byron York has a piece in The Washington Examiner giving details on the forthcoming book by Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer. The book relates Bush criticisms of evidently numerous other politicians Republican and Democrat alike. York details an interaction recounted in the book "Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor,"between Lattimer and Bush as they were preparing for a speech for CPAC.  

"What is this movement you keep talking about in the speech?" the president asked Latimer.
Latimer explained that he meant the conservative movement -- the movement that gave rise to groups like CPAC.
Bush seemed perplexed. Latimer elaborated a bit more. Then Bush leaned forward, with a point to make.
"Let me tell you something," the president said. "I whupped Gary Bauer's ass in 2000. So take out all this movement stuff. There is no movement."

10 Downing Dimes on Obama

DailyMail has a report on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's feigned ignorance on the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber:

President Obama and the US Secretary of State fuelled a fierce American backlash against Britain, claiming Abdelbaset Al Megrahi should have been forced to serve out his jail sentence in Scotland – but a senior Whitehall aide said their reaction was ‘disingenuous’.

British officials claim Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton were kept informed at all stages of discussions concerning Megrahi’s return.

"Disingenuous," color me shocked by that news.

The decision to release Megrahi has been enormously unpopular. Rasmussen found 82% of Americans disagreed with the decision to release the bomber who was reportedly dying from prostate cancer. Megrahi's medical condition is not entirely convincing. It seems just as likely oil contracts motivated the release.

Whatever the true motivation for releasing a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of US citizens, Americans agree the decision was a bad one. Faced with plummeting polls, the President offered a meek response that the decision was a "mistake." Though he didn't say directly he was uninformed, the President left the implication open. Had he truly known and been opposed to the decision, did the UK or Scottish officials ignore his concerns? Not likely, but now the doubt is removed:

‘We would never do anything about Lockerbie without discussing it with the US. It is disingenuous of them to act as though Megrahi’s return was out of the blue.

'They knew about our prisoner transfer agreement with Libya and they knew that the Scots were considering Megrahi’s case.’

Hat Tip: Atlas Shrugs and Memeorandum

Have the Stars Aligned for Health Care?

Throughout his full court press strategy to sell the American public on health care reform, President Obama has repeatedly used the phrase the "stars have aligned" implying health care reform is inevitable due to some cosmic glitch beyond our control. The last time the stars were aligned was coincidentally when the last Democratic President had a Democratic Congress, namely Clinton. We all know how that turned out. Have the stars aligned even more perfectly this time for the "One" Barack Obama or is his health care effort every bit as vulnerable as Clinton's?

Certainly things have not been going very smoothly for the President given that cosmic alignment and all. He has made several pretty disastrous mistakes while trying to maneuver legislation through the Congress. Recent polls show the public appetite for reform souring. The question remains, though, whether there was a greater appetite for reform now compared to the mood in the Clinton era.

To answer this question Robert Y. Shapiro and Sara A Arrow of Columbia University compared polling data from 1994 and 2009 and tested the hypothesis there would be greater support for Obama's reform. The results showed the public mood or climate to be roughly the same if not even slightly less favorable than during the Clinton presidency. While several questions showed a more favorable mood those that showed less favorable mood related to increased taxes required to finance the reform:

The questions that yielded less favorable responses concerning health care reform during 2008-2009 than 1993-1994 were ones that asked about paying taxes: to finance national health insurance, to enable everyone to have health insurance, or to guarantee health insurance coverage

There was also a less favorable environment with respect to the belief the country as a whole spent too much on health care and there was a 6 point increase in opposition to guaranteeing health care for all Americans.

The current mood was also compared to that of the Johnson Administration where the most sweeping reforms were passed through Congress with the creation of Medicaid and Medicare. There was one significant difference between the Johnson era and the current political environment:

But what has changed in American politics since that time is that partisan and ideological differences, both in Congress and other leadership arenas and consequently in mass public opinion itself, have widened across the full range of
economic, racial, social values, and foreign policy issues (cf. Bafumi and Shapiro, 2009; Page and Shapiro, 1992, Chapter 7)

The authors' conclude that despite a relatively stable mood over time for change in the health care system, the perils of the Clinton Administration's efforts suggest that President Obama has his work cut out for him.

Hat Tip to Andrew Gelman who provides a thorough review of this study at FiveThirtyEight.