{"id":6626,"date":"2013-10-15T10:46:03","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T17:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6626"},"modified":"2013-10-15T10:46:03","modified_gmt":"2013-10-15T17:46:03","slug":"sort-of-true-sort-of-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/sort-of-true-sort-of-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Sort of True, Sort of Not"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The problem with negotiating with President Obama is not necessarily that he sometimes makes things up, but that he always sort of makes things up. Take a \"Photosingle recent October 8 press. All at once, the president used a weird assortment of similes and allusions to brand ad nauseam his opponents as little more than ransom takers, house burners, defaulters, global-economy crashers, nuclear-bomb users, extremists, threateners, extortionists, hostage takers, plant burners, and equipment breakers. He then bragged that domestic oil and gas production on his watch are at an all-time high\u2014true, but he left out the salient fact that such gains are entirely the result of exploration on private lands, given that under his administration new federal oil and gas leases have by intention radically slowed. In 2010 actual oil and gas production on federal land hit historic lows. Ditto Obama\u2019s brag that he lowered the deficit by half. If that claim turns out to be true, it is largely because of congressionally imposed sequestration cuts he opposed and record-low interest rates of scarcely over 2 percent that reflect a moribund recovery but have allowed us to triple the debt to $17 trillion, but to pay only about the same costs to service it as was true in 1997 when what was owed was two-thirds less but the interest rate three times higher. How long will interest rates stay at about 2 percent on federal obligations? Opponents of Obamacare were reduced to obstructionists, without mention that\u00a0every<\/em>\u00a0one of the original presidential health-care promises\u2014cheaper premiums, easy online access, no tax increases, unaltered existing health plans, increased job creation and business competitiveness, help for reducing the deficit, etc.\u2014upon full enactment so far have turned out to be quite untrue.<\/p>\n

The problem with such disingenuousness\u2014calling for civility coupled with the above invective, bragging about radically lowering deficits without specifying why and how they occurred, and taking credit for radically more oil and gas production while being indifferent or opposed to it\u2014is that, although it can be delivered in a cool, flippant mode, it is also now six years old, and few believe any more that what he asserts so breezily as fact is much more than half true. In contrast, had he stopped the name-calling, honestly explained why deficits have gone down somewhat (from record highs), praised the private energy sector and promised to give it more help on public lands, and admitted the problems with Obamacare\u2014he would now be negotiating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner The problem with negotiating with President Obama is not necessarily that he sometimes makes things up, but that he always sort of makes things up. Take a single recent October 8 press. All at once, the president used a weird assortment of similes and allusions to brand ad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[619,546],"tags":[42,88,40,213],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1IS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6638,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-heed-thyself\/","url_meta":{"origin":6626,"position":0},"title":"Obama, Heed Thyself","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"He used to know some important things. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Republicans and Democrats are still name-calling in their arguments over the government shutdown, out-of-control federal spending, and the implementation of Obamacare. Yet if both sides would agree to just follow the earlier advice of President Obama,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/3544735027_8a0ac7b28a-201x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6614,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-as-chaos\/","url_meta":{"origin":6626,"position":1},"title":"Obama as Chaos","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Amid all the charges and countercharges in Washington over the government shutdown, there is at least one common theme: Barack Obama\u2019s various charges always lead to a dead end. They are chaos, and chaos is hard to understand, much less refute. By that I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Commentary","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/commentary-obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4092,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/making-it-up-as-we-go-along\/","url_meta":{"origin":6626,"position":2},"title":"Making It Up As We Go Along","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Being There Gone is Bush the great Constitution-shredder. Tribunals, renditions, Predators, wiretaps, Iraq, Guantanamo, preventative detention \u2014 these are now either embraced or expanded. Iraq (\u201cthe surge is not working\u201d) is Obama\u2019s \u201cgreatest achievement.\u201d The public I think believes Obama demagogued all those protocols\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3420,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/president-hamlet\/","url_meta":{"origin":6626,"position":3},"title":"President Hamlet","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services More than 400 years ago, William Shakespeare wrote a riveting tragedy about a young, charismatic Danish prince who vowed to do the right thing in avenging his murdered father. That soon proved easier said than done. As a result, Hamlet couldn\u2019t quite ever\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Commentary","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/commentary-obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3405,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-man-made-energy-crisis\/","url_meta":{"origin":6626,"position":4},"title":"A Man-Made Energy Crisis","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Gas is well over $4 a gallon in most places in California \u2014 and soaring elsewhere as well. But are such high energy prices good or bad? That should be a stupid question. Yet it is not, when the Obama administration has stopped\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4084,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-post-tucson-era\/","url_meta":{"origin":6626,"position":5},"title":"The Post-Tucson Era","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Chrysalis Opens The new Barack Obama has learned not to offer instantaneous editorial commentary in the fashion of his past editorializing on hearing of the\u00a0Skip Gates\u00a0[1] affair, the\u00a0Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab\u00a0[2] bombing attempt, the Ground Zero mosque controversy, or the\u00a0Maj. Hasan\u00a0[3] mass murdering. Instead,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6627,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6626\/revisions\/6627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}