The Czar was dining on chipotle chicken sandwiches yesterday back at the Castle, and the Mandarin, dining on what we charitably call the biggest pork tenderloin sandwich we have ever seen, joined him at the table. The Czar mentioned he has been watching the television commercials by Illinois’ democratic candidate for the US Senate, Alexi Giannoulias, in which Alexi says, basically, that his opponent “Mark Kirk misunderstood or even lied about his military record. What else is he lying about?” The Czar suggested a very simple commercial for candidate Kirk: zoom in on Kirk sitting at his desk, signing some piece of paper. Have Kirk look up at the camera and say, “Okay, I screwed up when I exaggerated my military record. Alexi Giannoulias knowingly loaned money to organized crime. Who do you want in office?” And then cut away.

Because people get that simple stuff. Call it like it is.

And on a related note, Dr. J. writes in with a status report (which we urge you to ignore on a you-don’t-need-to-know-basis) and a commercial he found over at the Corner:

Dread and etc…

I am sitting in a plane on the Midway Tarmac on a stopover from an undisclosed location, returning to New Atlantis. Related to that trip we will have Mandarin’s ultrasound death ray satellite ready for yeti season.

Checking the Corner at NRO, this caught my eye.

Click here to see the video.

I have to keep this pithy. We take off soon.

Beyond the 80s nostalgia that will resonate with conservative boomers and gen-xers, it highlights how President Obama, instinctively and reflexively is Reagan’s mirror. It also clearly contrasts the current statist policies with the last true small government president we’ve had.

Your D&A thoughts are welcome.

Best,
Dr. J.

P.S. Your Jupiter post rocked.

Go ahead and click on Dr. J’s link. The new video is very much worthwhile. The Czar thinks it is a particularly effective spot that is proving the GOP is starting to get this new media stuff…like television. It hammers home the facts of the situation: look, here is the reality. Now what do you want to do?

Sure, a lot of people are going to declare this 80s nostalgia kitsch, but it works. If you remember the original, you will agree. If you do not remember the original, it still works perfectly. Some thoughts though.

The Czar would not say that Reagan was true small government president. Although he clearly favored smaller government, the Federal government was still a massively bloated, unwieldy mess throughout his Presidency. And this began pretty much with Andrew Jackson, whom the Czar remembers well. Unfortunately, quite a few liberal pundits are mocking the Tea Party on this point: for all the return-to-Reagan talk, you cannot reduce the size of the government; it is too far gone. So live with it. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, however, has a pretty solid model showing some amazing first steps to get there. We won’t get small overnight, but we can still do a heck of a lot better than this. (Dr. J. was being brief, and the Czar criticizes him not for his brevity.)

Second, is Obama a mirror image, or should we perhaps say the antithesis of Reagan? Another way to think about this: how close to Carter is Obama? The Wall Street Journal has some interesting comparisons about this today.

However, the problem with the WSJ piece is simple: these are broad generalizations that could be coincidence. What these comparisons fail to respect is how considerably different Obama is from Carter.

Carter came off, rightly, as a sanctimonious jerk who fooled no one. He always coughed up his gentle Southern grandpa from poor, humble beginnings act, although everybody knew that in private he was a cold, calculating bastard with a real mean streak. When you learned that he used to tote empty luggage on camera—to show he was a do-it-yourself guy who needed no expensive help—you knew it was staged for our benefit. And he was way out of his depth on foreign policy. We just did not remotely expect the horrific consequences of his incomeptence that has resulted in millions of deaths in the Middle East from Israel to Pakistan. In short, we knew it was a two-bit act for our benefit.

But Obama is cut more from a Wilsonian cloth: a snobbish and snotty intellectual who assumes that something that can be measured can be performed; that if you can sketch it on a white board, it ipso facto becomes reality. Obama neither wants nor needs your help: he has his cadre of academic consiglieri who can bark statistics and cite theories from the original textbooks. Carter wanted us to pity him; Obama wants us to admire. On the domestic front, Carter wanted us to imagine he was suffering with us, eating cold food out of a can, and turning the heat down at night on the Secret Service. Obama wants us to see him in control, inspiring us, and reminding us that our pain and suffering is caused by a lack of belief in him.

Carter saw foreign policy as a nightmare, with the US needing to play the lead role but having no idea what script to read from. Obama sees foreign policy as an extension of his childhood travels: a lot of neat places that do interesting things we could borrow. Obama does not want to play a leading role; he just wants to join the Greek chorus, pointing out flaws and warnings to the audience.

So this is why the advertisement works. It spells out that people are effing miserable, and things are not getting better. And not only does it point out where the blame lies, but tells you what you can do about it: vote this November.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.