From the right: What Trump Knows That Obama Didn’t
Why did President Barack Obama have to struggle so hard to get the economy growing at just 2 percent a year? It’s obvious, suggests The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes: “He had the wrong policies — lots of them.” Reversing them produced “a more robust economy” from the day President Trump was elected. Where Obama raised taxes, Trump cut them. Obama “was a regulatory zealot,” while Trump “is passionate about deregulation.” Obama’s biggest accomplishment was the Affordable Care Act; Trump “got rid of the individual mandate that forced everyone to buy expensive insurance or be fined.” Fact is, “the shift in economic policy to the right changed the direction of growth from down to up. . . . That’s what tax cuts deliver and tax hikes don’t.”
Foreign desk: What Turkey Hopes To Gain from Khashoggi
From the moment Jamal Khashoggi disappeared, notes Frida Ghitis at Politico, Turkey’s government, through its government and loyal press, “has maintained an ominous, steady drip of information,” with each leak suggesting “ever-more gruesome evidence” of his murder and Saudi involvement. For President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Khashoggi’s assassination “represents a perfectly timed opportunity” at a time of “looming economic disaster,” when relations with the United States, Saudi Arabia and other sources of help are in crisis. This has created “a chance to turn around that misfortune, or to at least lessen its sting.” And Erdogan “knows he is holding valuable cards.” So he’ll use the evidence “to extract concessions” from Riyadh. This, in turn, will give him leverage over Washington. All but forgotten is the “thuggish behavior” of Erdogan’s own bodyguards in Washington.
Security desk: If Mattis Goes, Trump Will Miss Him
President Trump says he thinks James Mattis “is sort of a Democrat” — the first unflattering thing he’s said publicly about the retired four-star Marine general. Which has Bloomberg’s Eli Lake asking “why Trump thinks his secretary of defense is on the other team.” Maybe because from the start “Mattis sought to build a bipartisan team at the Pentagon,” courting both Democrats and never-Trumpers. Or perhaps it’s his opposition to abandoning the Iran nuclear deal. Plus, at times “Mattis has seemed like he was managing the president as much as the Pentagon.” Still, Trump should “appreciate that the man who currently has the job is one of the few remaining public figures in America who has the trust of both parties.”
Mideast Watch: DC Still Lacks Winning Iran Strategy
At some point, warns Michael Ledeen at PJ Media, the administration “will have to ask the basic questions about Iran.” For now, they’re focused on “how vicious the economic pressure should be.” But this, he suggests, “is misguided” — because “it does not address the central issue, which is how to best promote the downfall of the Islamic Republic.” And that’s “a political issue, not a matter of economic engineering.” Because “most successful revolutions reach peak force when the social and economic conditions are improving, not getting worse and worse.” If revolutions “were a consequence of economic misery,” we’d see “massive uprisings in North Korea and much of sub-Saharan Africa.” Today’s protests in Iran are “not a demand for higher income” but “a revolt against a failed regime and in favor of greater freedom.”
Culture critic: Sex Police Leashing Campus Newshounds
Tarleton State University’s student news outlet thought it had a real scoop when several young women came forward to tell of sexual overtures by an established professor at the North Texas school. But as Steve Miller reports at Real Clear Investigations, officials not only reprimanded the school’s newspaper adviser, they “threatened to fire him if he didn’t submit to additional training.” Under Title IX, they said, “any alleged sexual harassment” had to first be reported to university authorities. Colleges have a long history of “meddling with student media by defunding them or censoring content.” But this case, and similar ones like it at other schools, “may signal a move toward more active regulation of campus speech.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann