History is made! For the first time since 1961, small children will live at the White House. Amy Carter and Chelsea Clinton lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but neither was really a child anymore, and neither was (at the time, at least), particularly photogenic. Some social scientist somewhere should examine why three of the last four Democrats elected to the office of president have had children young enough to live at home while zero of five Republican presidents serving during the same period have had any. Perhaps it says something about the seasoned nature of GOP presidents or the youthful exuberance of Democratic presidents.

Or not.

I wonder if the Obama’s choice of educational facilities for their tots will generate the kind of media attention afforded the previous Democratic incumbent’s decision. Some may recall that the Clintons set themselves up for considerable criticism when they – stalwart supporters of the public education movement – nevertheless decided to send their daughter to a toney private school rather than enroll her in the D.C. public school nearby. My guess is that the Secret Service was instrumental in this politically-charged decision. For the record, Amy Carter went to public schools so the Secret Service excuse may not be valid.

Given that I rigidly adhere to a policy of remaining blissfully uninformed about matters of public policy, I am free to roam where the responsible fear to tread. It is said by many commentators – including me – that Mr. Obama is the first African-American elected to the White House. But, in fact, the president-elect is only half-black given that his mother is Caucasian. How utterly fitting it is that the United States; a nation that has struggled with race relations from its founding, butchered 600,000 of its citizens to end slavery and disgraced itself with another 100 years of Jim Crow should, in 2008, effect a compromise by electing the junior Senator from Abraham Lincoln’s home state.

President Bush will join his father as a man whose political fortunes rose with international crises and dropped with economic ones. The economy felled Bush Sr. and did likewise to the Republicans in 2008. More on that anon.

“President-elect” is becoming an office unto itself. The stock market rose almost 500 points when the P-E’s choice for Treasury Secretary was leaked. Some sage at NPR pointed out that the current financial crisis is so profound that the P-E’s understandable desire to maintain a low profile during the transition had to yield to the market’s equally-understandable desire for some signal of his intentions. The market consensus seemed to be that any signal other than the incumbent’s behavior was positive, even if the signal was “more of what the incumbent has been doing”. And Obama back-peddled on his pledge to drive a stake into the Bush tax cuts – announcing his intention to allow them to die a natural death in 2011 instead. My guess is that the tax cut will enjoy the same fate as any other un-staked vampire.

The Feds are pumping billions and, perhaps, trillions of dollars into resuscitating the economy. Soon, dollars will be scratch-pads on international monetary markets.

Stupidity abounds. Detroit automakers brought tin cups to Washington in corporate jets. These are the descendants of the wooden-heads of the ’70’s, intent on completing the destruction of the American auto industry their predecessors inaugurated. Thirty years ago they said “Give ‘em fins, V-8’s, lots of steel and 8-track tape players”. Today’s morons have had to jettison the 8-tracks only because CD technology is predominant. Behemoth trucks for accountants and Humvees for soccer moms rolled off Detroit’s assembly lines right up until the moment gasoline mysteriously became scarce. The auto execs stood around with that “who cut the cheese?” look on their pusses and wondered how the price of crude could go from $43.00 a barrel to $143.00 and back to $50.00 despite the fact that the inscrutable Chi-coms were still consuming gas that rightfully belonged in American tanks. These “captains of industry” should be busted down to “bilgewater” in due course.

Citibank wallowed in the slops of the mortgage boom and then lost 97% of its share value in six months. If Citibank is so central to the American financial system that its collapse will endanger bums cadging quarters on Peachtree Street, perhaps we should appoint it the successor to the Federal Reserve and replace the FDIC with AIG insurance. At least then we might be able to go to hell in a Gulfstream IV instead of a handbasket.

If we’re all going to have to suffer an economic downturn and subject our progeny to a future of penury, the least we should be able to get out of it is a witch-burning. I’ll stack the first fagots by suggesting that every Republican officeholder above the level of county surveyor be consigned to the stake. In Congress and the White House they were all so busy congratulating themselves on the fact that millions were achieving the American Dream of home ownership, they failed to notice that no recently-minted wealth stood behind any of it. Mortgage lenders collected huge fees by including them in their clients’ loans and, thus, pay “no closing costs”. A borrower’s ability to re-pay the loan was determined by having an internal body temperature of 98.6 degrees or thereabouts and a level of language and math skills equal to contemporary American high school students. These loans to idiots were then “bundled” and shipped off to other idiots – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – which behaved like all “public corporations” by slurping them up and fobbing them off to the ripe sucks of Wall Street. Everybody made money. Everyone was happy. There seemed to be no lack of bigger fools.

4.3%, interest-only sub-prime teaser rates blossomed into 9.5%-plus-your-first-born-child-(and, by the way, you’re upside-down on your mortgage) man-killers. Unlike all other Ponzi schemes, those who got into the game early (the borrowers) lost their shirts and everything else, while those at the tail end got bonuses and taxpayer dough. Lucky borrowers were able to sell their homes and only had to stroke a check to their mortgage company for the privilege.

My home state of Georgia has examples aplenty of greed and stupidity. In 2003 the GOP found itself in possession of the Governor’s mansion and both houses of the Legislature for the first time in the state’s history. Mortgage industry lobbyists met with the leadership and hinted that a measure passed in the previous Democratically-controlled Legislative session and signed by the now-defeated Democrat incumbent should be deep-sixed. The law required that mortgage lenders do unpleasant things like actually seek documentation of a borrower’s ability to take on a loan. The prospect of campaign contributions inspired the incoming Republicans to gut the law and allow loans for houses to be awarded on roughly the same basis as payday loans (“your job is your credit!”). Then, the Republican solons sat like toilets with their lids up as the contributions poured in. *

My own Representative in Congress stuffed himself into an improbable laissez-faire sack and announced that he was opposed to the initial bailout because it allowed financial Bozos to retain their golden parachutes. He was joined by others of like-mind and the initial proposal was defeated which caused the Dow to lose a squintillion or so points the next day and threaten the financial stability of the entire planet. Worldwide financial markets have been rising and falling (mostly falling) like the graph on an electrocardiograph to this day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of principle, but we’re at least 80 years beyond the day when someone in government could piously state that the “business of America is business” and be taken seriously. I wrote the chump a letter and predicted just the kind of voter response as took place on November 4th.

And the elections are not even over. As of December 11, the results in Minnesota are incomplete. A Florida-style recount is taking place to determine if incumbent Republican Norm Coleman will retain his seat against the challenge of Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate Al Franken. Franken used to be a “liberal humorist” but his humor is akin to that of middle-aged teetotaler ladies with pinched faces, square glasses and fixed opinions on demon rum. Anything that makes them laugh should strike horror in the hearts of decent people.

Georgia held a runoff election on December 2nd. Incumbent Saxby Chambliss successfully defended his seat against Democrat Jim Martin. In the general election contest, Martin complained that Chambliss supported the first corporate bail-out. In the runoff, he groused because Chambliss won’t support the second one. Martin needs to make up his mind about this. I like Chambliss because he supports the FairTax, but his presence in the next Congress will do nothing to advance that idea in a Senate with 58 – 59 Democrats.

What can we expect with the Democrats in control of all the whistles and bells for the first time in fifteen years? Not much. For one thing, there’s no money. It was all shipped off in boxcar lots to stave off disaster for everyone except foreclosed homeowners – many of whom left their homes with nothing more than what they could stuff in the minivan. There are a half-dozen or so single-room, no-deposit transient lodges in my town and their parking lots are crammed with late-model vans and SUV’s. These are not the vehicles of crackheads and welfare queens.

We should see a temporary diminution of violence in Iraq. Continued American vigilance as we withdraw our forces over the next eighteen months will be augmented by ammunition conservation on the part of Sunni and Shia’h contestants stocking up for the coming bloodbath. The conflict in Afghanistan will continue because we are there to liberate the Afghans from the Taliban, support our ally Pakistan and hunt down Osama bin-Laden. The Democrats will be no more successful in achieving these goals than were the Republicans.

The balance of America’s foreign policy will be outsourced to the United Nations.

But Republicans have no grounds for either anger or fear. Consider the sacred principles which the GOP has manfully talked about since 1980 and tell me if they actually DID anything to achieve them. Is government smaller? No. Is the deficit tamed? No. Is abortion banned? No. Are public school students mumbling bureaucrat-written prayers? No. Is Creationism taught therein? No. Has the drug “problem” been removed? No. Have Americans retrieved their sacred right to own assault weapons? No. Is government less-involved in the market? No. Are we drilling for oil in Alaska or Florida? No.

Republicans have failed because they believed that the conflict was political. It is not. It is cultural. Sixties-era radicals have long held tenure in America’s universities. The Fox News Network is no match for CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, the Washington Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle. Conservatives used to have ideas but that ended when the American Spectator decided in the ’90’s that Troopergate, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky and Hillary were more important.

Only a profound and sustained cultural and intellectual campaign will convince Americans that security must come from government but prosperity never can. When the sum of human strivings are distilled from paleolithic clans to the California gay marriage ban, what can be discerned is that those who love to exercise power over their fellows have always been a threat and remain so today. Nobody can expect to overcome 6,000 years of human history in one election cycle.

* This wonderful image is from P. J. O’Rourke’s book Parliament Of Whores. I swiped it so that I could use this space to wish him a speedy and complete recovery.