For political professionals it’s tempting to write off Herman Cain’s candidacy as a surge that will eventually wash back out to sea.

But that would be a mistake.

Cain has two things going for him that have intersected in time and could make his candidacy truly historic- unlike the canned, Nobel-prize winning infomercial Democrats put on for the mile-high, but inch deep Barack Obama.

Change?

Obama’s really about more of the same: more government, more power, more money, more fundraising, more problems, more regulations. Nothing has changed in Washington; it’s only that the checks are bigger.

The only thing different about Obama is his historic redefinition of the size and scope of government to make it truly the dominating feature of society at a time American citizens are sick and tired of government.

If one wants to call that audacity, they are welcome to it. But with Obama down 8 points to a generic Republican candidate, I’d call it something else.

And the mistake that Republicans could make is that much of the GOP field offers only Obama-lite: more government, more power, more money, more fundraising, more problems, more regulations with the same bitter taste, just lower taxes.

It’s not Cain the leader, or even Cain the thinker that’s so appealing to people. Bigger isn’t better, people have decided.

Cain’s remedies look different than the failed policies of the past. Those policies too often have been defined by each party’s argument about what we should have more of- all aided and abetted by a media anxious to remain relevant in a smaller world.

Should we have more foreign policy or more domestic policy? Either way, it costs the same.

But unlike previous presidential cycles, the media won’t be able to dictate rights and wrongs, yes or no’s, thumbs up or thumbs down for candidates this time around.

While we are heaping out blame on political parties, processes and electoral college maps for the stratified society that we live in, we mustn’t forget to lay most of the blame at the feet of a self-selected media elite that sold America on the idea that reaching across the aisle was the same thing as solving problems.

John McCain, who reached across the aisle to bring us some of the most disastrous reforms in American history, was practically sainted in his misinformed, maladapted legislative efforts. Obamacare was another effort by the media elite to give us a halleluiahed, reach-across-the-aisle moment in American history.

But as they marched us down the aisle on Obama, Obamacare, Cap and Trade and other crimes masterminded by US funded think-tanks, something happened to the media message.

They finally lost forever the last bit of control they had to move the agenda in middle America.

The most under-covered story of the last three years of politics is the democratization of media.

In the last presidential election cycle, conservative voters weren’t on Facebook, hadn’t heard of Twitter, didn’t blog they way they do now.

And it is that ability to talk over the media directly to other grassroots conservatives through social media that was responsible for the spontaneous formation of the Tea Party.

It’s also responsible for the post-partisan candidacy of Herman Cain.

Like they did with the phenomena of the Tea Party, it would be unwise for the media to dismiss the populist spirit that goes to the core of the Cain campaign.

Cain may bust for all I know, but the populism will remain until our leaders look a lot more like Herman Cain.

John Ransom is the Finance Editor for Townhall Finance. You can follow him on twitter @bamransom and on Facebook: bamransom.

Federal Reserve critic Ron Paul has hit out at fellow Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, saying the Texas governor’s views make him “look like a moderate.”

“I have never once said [Ben] Bernanke has committed treason,” Paul said, referring to comments that Perry made about the Fed chairman.

Perry said on Tuesday that it would be “almost treacherous or treasonous,” if the Fed under Bernanke increased the money supply before next year’s election.

Paul’s response: “He realizes that talking about the Fed is good, too. But I tell you what: He makes me look like a moderate.”

The sniping between the two Texans threatens to take center stage in the Republican battle for the White House now that the bickering between two Minnesotan candidates, Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, is over. Their war of words ended in victory for Bachmann when Pawlenty dropped out of the race on Sunday.

Paul has already complained that the media is focusing too much on Perry and not enough on his campaign even though he finished a close second to Bachmann in Saturday’s Iowa Straw Poll.

“What are they afraid of?” he asked on Fox News today. “We’re certainly in the top tier, we showed we did well in Iowa and we have a good organization, we can raise money.”

Actually, Paul has distinguished himself among Republicans in recent years by calling for elimination of the Federal Reserve. But now, Perry and another GOP presidential candidate, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, are in that camp.

How does Paul view other Republicans jumping on the anti-Fed bandwagon?

“He kind of looks at it as, it’s good to see other candidates finally catching up by at least paying lip service to some of this,” Paul spokesman Gary Howard said. “Unfortunately, we’re looking at people’s records, and they don’t have much of a record in dealing with this issue.”

Tea party and establishment Republicans alike are lighting into the Fed.

“Americans have come to have an unhealthy distrust of all government institutions, including the Federal Reserve, and politicians like Perry and Paul are tapping into it,” Mark McKinnon, a veteran GOP consultant, told The Hill. “I think for Paul it is a policy issue and for Perry it is a political issue.”

Meanwhile, Paul made light of Perry’s comments in a New Hampshire campaign event Wednesday with this quip: “Now they have this other governor, I can’t remember his name.

“He realizes that talking about the Fed is good, too. But he makes me sound like a moderate. I have never once said Bernanke has committed treason. But I have suggested very strongly that the Federal Reserve system and all the members have been counterfeiters for a long time.”

Rick Perry’s entry into the Republican nomination process has transformed the 2012 election into a truly memorable contest. Before his entry, conservatives were stuck with a choice between a hard-nosed newcomer with just two House elections under her belt and a penchant for occasional gaffes, and a smooth-talking corporate type who fathered ObamaCare and ranked 47 out of 50 in state job growth as governor of Massachusetts — hardly inspiring options.

Perry changes the game. This election cycle is going to be about two main issues: the economy and the nature of what America will look like. Perry is an advocate with a record on both scores.

First, the economy: President Obama’s economic record is well known; he is the worst fiscal failure since FDR. His meddling with the monetary supply has raised prices dramatically. His government programs have artificially inflated real estate prices and delayed the necessary foreclosures that would allow the market to recover. His coma-inducing debt spending has destroyed America’s credit and sold our children and grandchildren into financial servitude.

Perry, by contrast, has presided over a state that has gained jobs since the beginning of 2008. Even leaving aside government jobs, Texas has only lost 0.5 percent of its jobs since the beginning of 2008, as opposed to 6.6 percent nationally. When it comes to debt, Perry has the upper hand as well. While Texas increased its spending substantially over the last decade, the portion of the spending directly controlled by Perry — state general revenue spending — has declined. Perry has repeatedly cut taxes and worked with legislators this year to cut spending by $15 billion.

His record isn’t perfect. Texas has increased government employment dramatically, thanks mostly to growth in the military and energy sectors. Texas’ state debt stands at $34 billion, most of it from transportation spending and cancer research. The problem for Obama is that he can’t attack Perry on any of this. If he does, he’ll highlight the fact that as of January 2012, he will have escalated the national debt by over $5 trillion since he took office. Most of it has been on bailouts, health care bills and giveaways to his union buddies. In short, he has no ammunition in his gun; he’ll be bringing a peashooter to this gunfight.

Then there’s the broader issue of the 2012 election: What will the future of America look like? Obama has articulated a future of more entitlement spending, higher taxes and slower growth. He assures us that we will all be provided the security we so desperately seek. On foreign policy, Obama has explained that limiting American growth can create greater world equality and less Western imperial overreach, which in turn will allow for mutual respect.

The problem with this vision is that real world experience stands in direct contrast with it. Even as Obama preaches the virtues of the welfare state, Europe is aflame with leeches who riot when they don’t get their checks. Even as he exhorts Americans to accept a lesser role on the world stage, the threats of Iran, China and Russia grow ever larger.

Perry’s vision is different. He wants an America free from the heavy hand of government — as he put it in his announcement speech, he will “work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.” He wants to restore pride to the American military, rather than discomfort at fighting wars that their Commander in Chief denies even exists. His philosophy is clear and compelling.

For conservatives to win in 2012, we must give Americans a clear choice. We must present someone with governing experience; we have tried an untested candidate, and he has failed. We must offer-up someone who understands that individuals, not governments, create jobs; we have tried the corporatist approach, and it has failed. We must present someone who believes in a bright future for America, not a quiet descent into mediocrity.

Rick Perry certainly seems to fill those qualifications.

Ben Shapiro is a regular guest on dozens of radio shows around the United States and Canada and author of Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Seven Republican presidential contenders will try to use Thursday’s debate in the leadoff caucus state of Iowa to cast themselves as the strongest alternative to one rival: front-runner Mitt Romney.

At least two — Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, both of Minnesota — are hoping for a last-minute boost before an important weekend test vote that could make or break their campaigns. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is looking to make a strong impression in his first debate, while Texas Rep. Ron Paul is out to prove his ideas are more mainstream than fringe.

Others struggling to gain traction — former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, ex-Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and businessman Herman Cain — are simply seeking to promote their issues and maybe even boost their profiles.

All risk being overshadowed by one Republican who won’t be on the stage — Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has signaled he’s likely to join the field in the coming days and will visit the early nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina this weekend.

“This is the official opening of the season,” said Republican strategist Terry Holt. “It’s the debut and you better have your best stuff ready. That raises the stakes.”

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who lost the GOP nomination in 2008, is hoping for a repeat of a June debate in New Hampshire, where he emerged largely unscathed. He enjoys a commanding lead in fundraising and strong poll numbers and wants to protect both by sticking to his message.

“He will focus on jobs and why his 25 years of experience as a businessman and entrepreneur give him a unique set of skills to lead on the economy,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said.
It could be a winning strategy.

“For Gov. Romney, as the overall front-runner at this point, the key to any debate situation is to hold serve and continue to play to your strength, which is talking about the economy,” strategist Brian Jones said. “What’s been happening plays into the message of the Romney campaign.”

That was a reference to the recent debate in Washington over spending and a souring Wall Street, issues that have only emphasized the importance of the nation’s economy in the political debate. With unemployment stubbornly high and jobs not returning quickly enough, the Republicans are eager to go head-to-head with President Barack Obama in 2012.

His top rivals were determined to deny Romney that chance. Pawlenty, whose performance in a previous debate was panned when he initially refused to repeat the “Obamneycare” epithet he coined to link Romney’s health care law in Massachusetts with Obama’s national health overhaul, looked to repair his image and start anew.

“This is Pawlenty’s last chance,” GOP strategist Rich Galen said. “If he doesn’t do well, I suspect it’s three strikes and you’re out.”

Pawlenty knows he needs a strong showing if he’s to do well in the straw poll in Ames.

“The way forward for this country is going to start in Ames this Saturday,” Pawlenty told an audience in Atlantic, Iowa, on Wednesday. “It’s the end of the preseason in this campaign. This is the formal kickoff. I ask for your support. I need your help.”
He’s also hoping to deny Bachmann a triumph. During one interview, she was asked if she was a “flake.” Her first debate performance suggested she was not.

“I think that Bachmann has the most to gain and the most to lose. She is now a target where she wasn’t before,” former Republican Party of Iowa chairman Richard Schwarm said.

So, too, is Huntsman.

“The one who has the most to lose is Huntsman,” said Galen of Obama’s former ambassador to China. “A lot of people were hoping he would come on the scene and shake things up. There has been nothing.”
Huntsman aides said not to count him out.

“Jon Huntsman is going to demonstrate that he is the only leader who has a proven track record of conservative governance and job creation that the Republican nominee will need to beat President Obama next November,” spokesman Tim Miller said.

Yet in recent weeks, Huntsman has seen a raft of departures from his campaign, including his campaign manager.

That shake-up has paled in comparison to the one Gingrich suffered when his entire brain trust resigned earlier this year.

Laden with debt and having trouble raising money, Gingrich has severely curtailed his campaign schedule and is not participating in the straw poll. Santorum, too, has faced fundraising and polling troubles but has worked the grass-roots activists in Iowa to build support among social conservatives.

“Obviously the front-runner is Gov. Romney and he has got to maintain his position in the race,” Republican strategist Danny Diaz said. “The others will want to use this as a way to build some momentum.”

Republican 2012 contender Mitt Romney’s campaign is calling disgraceful actions reportedly planned by the Obama re-election campaign to portray the Republican frontrunner as “inauthentic, unprincipled” and “weird.”

Politico reported Tuesday that the Obama team is planning a “ferocious personal assault” and character assassination on Romney, who it suspects will become the eventual 2012 Republican nominee.

“Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” a prominent Democratic strategist close to the White House told Politico.

According to the newspaper, Obama campaign’s two fronts versus Romney are the “weirdness” factor and his record as CEO of Bain Capital, a multi-million dollar venture capital firm founded by Romney before he became Massachusetts governor.

Obama officials reportedly told Politico that they intend to depict Romney as the essence of Wall Street greed as well as uncomfortable in his own skin.

After reading the report, Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades fired back that Obama “will say and do desperate things to hold onto power because he knows he has failed.”

“It is disgraceful that President Obama’s campaign has launched his re-election with the stated goal to ‘kill’ his opponent with an onslaught of negative and personal attacks,” Rhoades told Fox News.

“Neither despicable threats, nor President Obama’s billion dollar negative campaign, will put Americans back to work, save their homes or restore their hopes. On November 6, 2012, this will change,” Rhoades said.

Obama has remained personally popular — scoring as high as an 86 percent approval rating in the District of Columbia in a recent Gallup poll. But while he’s personally well-liked, the president’s overall approval rating is 43 percent compared to 48 percent disapproval, according to Gallup.

With that knowledge and the poor economic climate, Politico reported that the Obama campaign has no choice but to give up the 2008 campaign of “hope” and turn negative, portraying the incumbent as “principled” whereas Romney is an “opportunist.”

Fox News’ Serafin Gomez contributed to this report.

Few Americans needed Standard & Poor to confirm the mismanagement of the United States government and its finances. The downgrading of American credit will raise interest rates on America’s huge debt and ultimately on all Americans. Popular polls say that most Americans blame Congress—but that’s too simplistic. As much as Barack Obama would like to shift that blame onto Congress, the fault lies squarely on the shoulders of President. It is first and foremost a leadership problem that is crippling America—and the leader is President Barack Obama—not the many members of Congress.

No matter how many speeches he makes, the conclusion is clear: Obama’s greatest failure is spending America into enormous deficits, and being clueless about how to get the economy to recover. His speeches, riddled with “I” and “We” are mostly serving to indict him for his failings. Appearing on TV more than any other sitting president, Barack Obama is constantly “explaining” why things aren’t working, when he should be working on what to do different and better.

Instead he is “campaigning,” which is the only thing he knows how to do reasonable well. But he can’t fix the economy; he has neither the experience nor the knowhow to do it. His failed, misguided policies have only exacerbated the size of his mistakes and shortcomings.

“I didn’t say ‘Change we can believe in tomorrow.,.’ I didn’t say, ‘Change we can believe in next week…’ “We knew this was going to take time.” —Barack Obama, Aug. 4, 2011.

Obama has surrounded himself with academics, theoreticians and politicians and all of their solutions are wrong, flawed and ineffective. Don’t take my word for it. Look at the evidence. Nobody in his inner circle has meaningful business experience. He not only doesn’t understand business, he dislikes businesses; they are only useful as a way to collect taxes to redistribute.

For Barack Obama’s first 18 months, and occasionally even today, he and his loyalists try to place the lion’s share of the blame for America’s problems with George W. Bush. There is little doubt that Bush erred seriously on several counts: he initiated two expensive wars and then saw the Iraq war mismanaged for at least 2-3 years.

Then Bush failed, along with the (then) GOP led Congress to rein in spending to compensate for the cost of these wars. Finally, he reduced tax rates and created the Medicare prescription drug program (which turned out to work better and cost far less than was feared).

Coincidentally, the much-maligned TARP initiated by Bush actually staved off a financial collapse and is largely being paid back by the banks and insurance companies involved. In perhaps his greatest mistake, Bush failed to veto a single spending bill sent to him by Congress.

Bush’s mistakes were clearly serious errors, but they pale in comparison with Obama’s failures since he took office. The Democratically controlled Congress was complicit with Obama’s failures. They have not submitted, and Obama has not submitted a realistic budget for the country in over 800 days—a clear failure to meet their responsibilities. (Exception: Obama’s irresponsible Feb. budget, which was voted down 97-0 by a Democratically controlled Senate.)

To chronicle Obama’s failures and his shortcomings is impossible within the length of a simple blog post. A few of them are most notable. Obama aided and abetted by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid rammed the new health care legislation down the throat of America—and Obamacare was created. Parts of it are well-intentioned, but much of it is feared by Americans and especially small businesses. Arguably some of Obama’s greatest damage to the economy has been done by his appointees in the EPA, NLRB, CPSC, et. al., and the Justice Department. American business is oppressed by regulation. Sadly, Obama barely realizes this.

Next came the $840 billion “stimulus” package, (mostly pork and patronage), which worked poorly or not at all—unless you consider creating jobs at $275,000 each to be a good solution. Not enough “shovel-ready” projects were really “shovel-ready” Obama admitted recently, chuckling awkwardly at his naiveté. Obama and his experts (now mostly gone back to finance or academia) predicted a drop of unemployment to under 8% when the number of jobless went the other way—upward. Now, more Americans have been out of work, for longer, than any time in the past half-century.

Obamacare not only violated many of his eloquent campaign promises; e.g., Taxes on Americans earning less than $200/$250,000 per year will no increase one penny—except for the new Obamacare tax to 3.8% applied to investment income—which will hit millions of Americans.
When faced with his party’s impending losses in 2008 elections, Obama dispatched Rahm Emmanuel to attempt buying-off candidates in the 2008 primaries with a promise of high-level jobs, a legally questionable practice at best, and unethical one at worst.

During Obama’s term in office the deficit has grown astronomically as he continues, even to this day, to insist on more spending and more taxes (especially those on “millionaires and billionaires” a category that most Americans earning $200-250,000 per year hardly imagine including them.)

Those who point to his achievements name “bailing out” GM & Chrysler—but many experts feel that was done by using executive power for further illegal actions, denying legal bondholders their rightful returns. There is also a strong belief that ordinary bankruptcy could well have accomplished the same result at a cost of almost $20 billion less of taxpayers’ money. But then spending too much of taxpayers money has never bothered this White House.

To make Obamacare’s outrageous financial claims, Obama & his Democratic Congressional minions desperately needed to cut its cost. Thus, buried in the 2000+-page bill, Obama and his accomplices Reid and Pelosi cut $500 billion out of Medicare. Now he pretends to worry about seniors while ignoring Medicare’s impending insolvency. After all, even if Obama could win a second term, he will be gone before Medicare fails, and be able to blame it on his successor.

Barack Obama was going to close Gitmo—until he realized that it was as unrealistic as much of his campaign rhetoric. Obama has violated the law, which requires the president to act within 15 days after the Medicare commission advises him of a financing problem. His Democratic allies gave him a waiver in his first year, but this year—he simply ignored the law.

Obama followed Bush’s foreign policy and even left most Bush appointees in charge, until recently. Obama’s vanquished primary opponent Hillary Clinton has precluded him from making as big a debacle of foreign policy as he has on domestic policy. He tried, early in his career, kowtowing to foreign dictators and despots, apologizing for America instead of protecting and defending it.

The ultimate failure of President Barack Obama is that he is unable or unwilling to lead; to define anything more than vague generalities as a solution to America’s daunting problems. Even his own allies in the GAO state, “we can’t value a speech.” In his desperation to run for reelection, Obama continues to abdicate his responsibilities. The debt ceiling was a showcase of his failings as he periodically jumped in and out of negotiations until he literally neutralized himself.

The president made himself an outsider in the decision, even as he tried to sound like a voice of reason, making speech after speech, saying less in each successive one. Senator Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner finally fought through massive partisan problems to reach a compromise agreement—but it was clearly too little, too late. Kicking the hard work down to a twelve person “super-committee” was not enough to settle financial markets.

While Barack Obama campaigned, making still more speeches at his 50th birthday celebrations, the Wall Street voted with its money and the Dow-Jones average dropped over 500 points and the S. & P. dropped even more—5%+. 117,000 jobs created in July don’t even approach the number needed to offset new entries to the workforce. The drop in unemployment from 9.2% to 9.1% signals more unemployed Americans giving up, not more of them being hired.

Happy Birthday Mr. President. You have accomplished something no other president has done. You’ve spent America into a hole that will take a decade to fix, and kept more Americans out of work longer than anyone in recent history, and you’ve accomplished all this in record time, only 2-1/2 years. Who knows how much harm you can do given still more time.

First, do no harm. That is a useful injunction for doctors, lawyers, and, it turns out, U.S. presidents.

But President Obama’s useless speech Monday about the basic soundness of the American economy managed to reinforce all the concerns Americans on the left and right have about his stewardship of the country.

The speech did at least temporary harm. As soon as he finished speaking, the already jittery financial markets plunged.

Americans didn’t want to hear that we’re fine people or that Warren Buffett thinks that we should have an impeccable credit rating.

They didn’t want him to repeat his basic talking points: the need to marshal the “political will” to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance benefits, or create an infrastructure bank.

They didn’t want to hear his perfectly reasonable desire to solve the debt crisis over time by cutting spending after the economy recovers and by raising more revenue from what the president now calls “tax reform” rather than new taxes.

Americans wanted to hear what President Obama was planning to do to create jobs and stop our economy from slipping over an economic abyss into a double-dip recession.

His calm, passionless, “voice of reason” message, without a single new proposal except his pledge to make specific proposals in the future and work with the Congressionally designated super-committee to address the deficit and debt crises – “leading from behind again” – actually panicked the markets. And no wonder. Americans were looking for a leader, and what we got was the professor again.

One must sympathize with the president. Last week was his worst week ever in the job.

First, he turned 50, usually traumatic for most people, even politicians.

Then he became the first president to have a downgrading of America’s credit worthiness on his watch – an action taken by Standard & Poor’s, a company that made a two trillion dollar mistake in its own budget calculations and which gave the highest credit rating to Lehman Brothers on the verge of bankruptcy and to the mortgage-backed securities that helped cause the 2008 financial crisis. How do you spell “chutzpah” on Wall Street?

Then he presided over the deadliest day in Afghanistan – the loss of 30 Americans soldiers, most of them Navy Seal commandos, some from the same unit that killed Usama Bin Laden. (He lauded their courage and sacrifice in the only convincing part of his today’s speech – at the end of that speech, which he introduced with the world’s most awkward transition: “One More Thing.”)

Then markets plunged.

The president has now managed to deepen the alienation of the right – which I believe unfairly accuses him of being a free-wheeling tax and spender whose profligacy is responsible for the nation’s slow growth and falling credit worthiness.

Now, the left of his party, too, is in full rebellion. On Sunday, Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory, articulated the fury of liberal Democrats in a New York Times Sunday Review essay.

He excoriated Obama for failing to provide a “counternarrative” to that of the right and for engaging in “the politics of appeasement” with the Tea Party. The public, he wrote, was desperate for a Roosevelt who would name names and assign blame – to his predecessors. (Hasn’t Obama done a lot of that?) Instead, it got more rhetoric. Instead of indicting his predecessors’ economic policies that had eliminated eight million jobs, “in the most damaging of the tic-like gestures of compromise that have become the hallmark of his presidency,” Westen wrote, “he backed away from his advisers who proposed a big stimulus, and then diluted it with tax cuts that had already been shown to be inert.” The predictable result was a “half-stimulus that half-stimulated the economy.”

How can one explain this lack of leadership? Westen offered several harsh theories. Perhaps Obama is, as conservatives have alleged, too inexperienced and hence, incompetent. Obama, he wrote, “had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state.” He had a “singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography.” Finally, before joining the Senate, he had voted “present” rather than “yea” or “nay” 130 times, “sometimes dodging difficult issues.”

But wait. Westen has an even harsher explanation, namely that America is being “held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election.”

Ouch. No wonder Mr. Obama looked so very shaken during a speech that was intended to boost the nation’s confidence.

Judith Miller is a writer, author and Fox News contributor.

In what Iran is touting as a “blow to the West,” a senior official with the nation’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is taking over as the new head of the OPEC oil cartel.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad named as his oil minister Brig. Gen. Rostam Ghasemi, who heads Khatam al-Anbia (KAA), an industrial giant owned by the Revolutionary Guards, and he was approved by Iranian lawmakers on Wednesday.

Ghasemi’s position as oil minister means he will preside over OPEC meetings this year, because Iran holds the rotating presidency of the 12-country cartel.

KAA has been targeted for international sanctions for activities relating to Iran’s nuclear program, the Guardian reported.

Ghasemi himself was added to the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals whose assets are frozen. Ghasemi cannot do business with Americans.

A Revolutionary Guards spokesman called the approval of Ghasemi as oil minister “a meaningful and crucial response to the attacks against the Guards from the West’s media empire.”

And an Iranian lawmaker was quoted as saying a vote for Ghasemi would be a vote for Iran’s “history of resistance.”

Britain’s Telegraph observed that “the fate of world oil prices could rest in the hands of a man who has devoted his whole life to opposing the West. Oil prices are high enough as it is, and the prospect of Iran using oil prices to hold the world to ransom is something that should give all of us sleepless nights.”

OPEC’s 12 nations, including Saudi Arabia and Iraq, account for about 79 percent of the world’s crude oil reserves and 44 percent of world production.

In 1973, Arab members of OPEC placed an embargo on oil exports to the United States and Western Europe in response to the West’s resupply of Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

During the recent debt crisis, President Obama talked about the need for bipartisan compromise and, as in the past, urged civility. Giving ground and engaging in polite discourse, of course, can be noble aims. But, like most one-eyed-jack politicians, Obama has rarely embraced the admirable qualities he advocates — a fact increasingly evident to a skeptical public.

In 2006, then-Senator Obama voted against the Bush administration’s request to raise the debt ceiling — when the national debt was about 60 percent of what it is now. He did not show up for similar votes in 2007 and 2008. In that regard, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid opposed every request when Republicans were in control of the Senate to raise the debt ceiling. Of course, such an unthinking party-line voter is exactly the sort of partisan senator or congressman that President Obama now deplores.

In fact, in 2007 the National Journal found that Obama’s voting record was the most partisan in the entire U.S. Senate — further to the hard-line left than the Senate’s only self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders, more predictably partisan than even the most consistently conservative senator that year, Jim DeMint. At the time, Senator Obama unapologetically wished to advance a hardcore liberal agenda, and he saw no reason to backtrack from it or compromise on it.

President Obama has repeatedly derided the sort of Republican partisanship that led the current minority party in the Senate to filibuster some of his appointments — most prominently his nomination of Goodwin Liu to the federal bench. But Senator Obama not long ago strongly advocated such partisan obstructionism when out of power he praised the filibuster as much as he now deplores it while in power. Indeed, he joined a filibuster to deny votes on the nominations of both Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court and John Bolton to the U.N. ambassadorship.

After the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, President Obama made yet another call for a new civility, urging us all to tone down our partisan rhetoric. But slash-and-burn talk is unfortunately the mother’s milk of politics — and no one knows that better than Chicago politician and apparently amnesiac Barack Obama, who as a state legislator, U.S. senator and president has always excelled in the use of uncivil rhetoric and personal invective.

During the last three years, in almost every debate — deficit reduction, taxes, illegal immigration — Obama has smeared the motives of his political opponents. He suggested that critics of illegal immigration wished to add moats and alligators to help close the border, and that they planned to arrest parents and children on their way to get ice cream. He advised that Latinos “should punish our enemies.” He accused opponents who wanted balanced budgets of abandoning children suffering from autism and Down syndrome.

Obama’s partisan rhetoric has always been rough. He called his political adversaries on taxes and the debt “hostage takers” who engaged in “hand to hand combat,” and needed to be relegated to the proverbial back seat. Obama even suggested that AIG executives were metaphorical terrorists: “They’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger.”

In an appeal to voters, Obama urged that they not act calmly, but get angry: “I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry!” The polarizing talk was the logical follow-up to his campaign hype of 2008, when he ridiculed the “clingers” of Pennsylvania, called on his supporters to confront his opponents and “get in their face,” and at one point even boasted, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” His jokes about Nancy Reagan and the Special Olympics were needlessly tasteless and crass.

Obama’s inflammatory language and tough metaphors are not all that unusual in the American political tradition. But what is odd is that a habitual participant in brass-knuckles political infighting would call for the sort of civility that he himself did not and will not abide by.

We are now engaged in a continuing debate about debt, taxes and spending. Both sides have vastly different ideas about how to solve our financial problems, and they will continue to embrace tough talk to win over public opinion to their respective sides. We hope for the best argumentation but expect the worst — democratic politics being what it is. And President Obama, the past master of bare-fisted partisan invective, knows that better than anyone.

So spare us any more of the bottled piety, Mr. President. Instead, just make the argument to the public that borrowing $4 billion a day is still necessary and sustainable — and explain how it came to be that this post-recession recovery on your watch is the weakest since World War II.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal.

Americans narrowly disapprove of the deficit reduction bill agreed upon in Washington on Monday, but they disapprove of Congress’ and President Obama’s handling of the debt ceiling crisis by a wide margin, according to a Newsmax poll conducted by InsiderAdvantage.

The survey also found that House Speaker John Boehner gets the highest approval marks among prominent members of Congress who played key roles in the agreement.

In the poll of more than 1,500 registered voters, 44 percent of respondents said they approve of the legislation, but 47 percent don’t like it, and the rest have no opinion.

Democrats are more likely than Republicans to approve of the bill: 51 percent of Democrats approve and 40 percent disapprove, while just 38 percent of Republicans approve and 51 percent disapprove. Among independents, 51 percent disapprove and 39 percent approve.

“The poll results show that the nation is pretty well split,” said Matt Towery, CEO of nonpartisan InsiderAdvantage.

“Most interestingly, just 38 percent of Republicans approve, so we can now understand why Republican candidates say they oppose the bill: They have pollsters, too, and understand the opposition among GOP voters.

“It’s also significant that more than half of independents disapprove, and independents will be crucial if Republicans expect to knock off President Obama in 2012.”

Asked for their opinion of the overall job performance of the House, the Senate, and the president in their efforts to raise the national debt ceiling, nearly three-quarters of respondents — 73 percent — say they disapprove, while just 23 percent approve.

Republicans solidly disapprove: 71 percent rate the job performance poorly, and just 14 percent approve. Among Democrats, 62 percent disapprove and 34 percent approve.

The highest disapproval rate, 77 percent, comes from voters ages 30 to 44.

“The entire Washington, D.C., establishment does not fare well in the opinion of voters,” Towery said.

“Interestingly enough, a sizeable percentage of Democrats, 62 percent, don’t approve of the president or Congress’ job performance in handling the crisis.”

Independents are even more disapproving: 78 percent say they don’t approve of the performance in Washington.

Respondents in the Newsmax poll were asked who is the one leader in Congress they believe performed the best in dealing with the debt ceiling issue. Boehner is the clear winner — 29 percent chose him, while 20 percent cited Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, 9 percent chose House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and 7 percent chose Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But 28 percent of respondents chose “none of the above,” and 8 percent had no opinion.

“The big winner here is Boehner,” Towery said. “Not only did he get 47 percent of the vote from Republicans, but also 35 percent from independents, so he came out looking better than the president.”

Asked for their opinion of President Obama’s performance in dealing with the issue, 59 percent disapprove and just 38 percent approve.

Significantly, 60 percent of the crucial independent voters say they don’t approve of Obama’s performance.

And 33 percent of black voters don’t approve of Obama’s handling of the issue.

“The disapproval rate is a stark and amazing number,” Towery said.

“Two things are most interesting. One, the independents’ disapproval vote is very high. Even more surprising, 33 percent of African-Americans disapprove. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I’ve been polling for a long time and have never seen Obama get this poor of a number among African-Americans.”

The InsiderAdvantage survey was conducted on Monday night, and was weighted for age, race, gender, and political affiliation.