By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, October 26, 2012
In the third and final debate, Barack Obama scored huge
points with the media, college kids and die-hard liberals -- in other words,
his base -- when he mocked Mitt Romney's concern about our historically small
Navy.
"But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn't spent
enough time looking at how our military works," the president said.
"You -- you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships
than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets
because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called
aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go
underwater, nuclear submarines."
"And so," he added, "the question is not a
game of Battleship where we're counting ships," The question is "what
are our capabilities."
This struck me as an example of how thoroughly liberalism
has confused sneering for intellectual confidence. It shouldn't be surprising,
given that comedy shows often substitute for news programs, particularly for
younger liberals. That's probably why the president has been spending more time
talking to DJs, entertainment shows and comedians than to reporters. He
desperately needs the support of low-information voters, who've replaced the
old adage "it's funny because it's true" with "if it's funny, it
must be true."
Obama's argument -- if that's not too generous a word --
is that the Navy in particular, and the military in general, can do so much
more because of technological advances.
And that is certainly true.
But it's also true that there have been huge advances in
the technology used to sink our ships and blow up our planes as well. And, to
date, no breakthrough innovation has led us to figuring out how to put one ship
in two places at once.
There's another problem. What innovation does he have in
mind? Many of our warplanes and nearly all of our major naval vessels are much
older than the pilots and sailors flying and sailing them. It's great to talk
up the benefits of innovation, but that argument starts to sputter when you
realize we are often relying on the innovation of older generations. For all
his talk about the game Battleship, we haven't built a real battleship in
almost 70 years, and the Navy hasn't had one in its arsenal for decades.
But what I find most interesting about this argument is
how selective it is. For instance, defenders of Obama's Keynesian economic
policies are constantly touting the benefits of big, high-tech spending
programs because of the "multiplier effect" -- the increased economic
activity "primed" by government spending.
Indeed, the economists who subscribe to these views tend
to tout military spending as particularly good evidence in their favor. Many
argue that it was the massive spending during World War II that really pulled
us out of the Great Depression (a flawed theory but more credible than the New
Deal itself, which mostly prolonged the Great Depression).
And yet, it seems that military spending is the only
Keynesian pump-priming this president doesn't like.
Conversely, his argument that technological advances
should deliver increased savings by providing more "bang for the
buck" doesn't seem to enter his thinking anywhere else. In the private
sector he finds improved efficiencies to be a burden -- all of those ATM
machines taking away good bank teller jobs.
And where are the technological efficiencies making
government more effective for less money? Surely the breakthroughs in
productivity, information management and telecommunications would afford us a
huge opportunity to cut away some of the obsolescence in the non-defense parts
of our government?
But no. Obama is constantly yearning to hire more
government workers. The private sector, he said not long ago, was doing fine.
The place we needed more jobs was in the federal, state and local
bureaucracies.
Indeed, in his new "plan" he promises -- again
-- to hire 100,000 new teachers. He is constantly assuring us that our
"crumbling" schools with leaky roofs are robbing children of their
education. The honest truth: You can teach kids in a school with a leaky roof
pretty easily. A submarine with a leaky roof? That's a problem.
The amazing thing is that we've been increasing federal
government spending on education at a blistering pace for decades. Where is the
return on the investment? Where are the improved capabilities and efficiencies
from investments in technology?
The military, which thrives on precisely the civic virtue
Obama insists is on full display in public education, has a lot to show for the
investments of the past Obama would like to curtail. Where's a similar return
in the non-defense sector? And has Obama ever bothered to ask that question?
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