It's the Liberty, Stupid

By Robert Tracinski

Well, it's official. The Obama phenomenon is over. Permanently.

It's not just that Obama's favorite weapon, the Big Speech, no longer moves public opinion. (Last Wednesday's health-care speech produced a slight "bounce" in public support for the health-care bill, but it disappeared in less than a week.)

What really ends the era of Obama is this: a major part of Obama's appeal was his symbolism as the first black president, which was supposed to give Americans an opportunity to put the whole ugly history of racial politics behind them. Yet here we are, less than eight months into Obama's administration, and the racial politics are worse than they have been in a long time.

Within days of Saturday's giant "tea party" rally in Washington, Obama's supporters in the press began denouncing the protesters as racists. That's what Jimmy Carter says, and Time's Joe Klein, and The American Prospect's Paul Waldman, and Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd at the New York Times, among others.

What is their evidence? Well, they don't have any—just over-active imaginations. Krugman opines that the "driving force" behind the tea party movement is "probably…cultural and racial anxiety," while Dowd says that when Joe Wilson told Obama he was lying, "what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!... Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it." Those are the journalistic standards at the Times nowadays: it's OK to libel half the population based on what you imagine they are "probably" thinking and on words they didn't say.

Along the same lines, Klein attributes opposition to Obama to "implicit" racism, while "social psychologist" Thomas Pettigrew makes explicit what this charge of "implicit racism" means: "The general idea is that people who don't recognize it in themselves look for legitimate means to carry out their subtle beliefs, sometimes even without awareness on their part that they're doing it." That's how a "social psychologist" gets to project onto you his own preconceptions about your character and motives—without actually needing to talk to you and ask you what you think.

And they have not asked us what we think, none of them. It is obvious from all of the accusations of racism that these crack reporters haven't attended the "tea party" protests, haven't talked to anyone there, haven't bothered to find out who we are and what we believe. They have simply projected onto us the ugliest motive they can think of, without the need for any evidence to validate it. It is one of the most gratuitous political smear campaigns I have ever seen.

For a dose of reality, check out this set of photos taken by one of my readers at Saturday's rally. The defining characteristic of the tea party rallies, and especially last Saturday's, is the profusion of signs—the movement's dominant medium of expression. You don't have to resort to imagining words these people didn't say or projecting what was "probably" in their minds. They tell you what they're thinking, with an enormous variety and creativity of homemade signs. A few favorites: "Do I Look Like an ATM to You?" The ever-popular "Give Me Liberty, Not Debt." "Congress Is a Toxic Asset." "Free Markets Not Free Loaders." And addressing the race issue head-on: "It Doesn't Matter the President Is Black. It Matters That He's Red." The most unusual sign: a genuine one-million-Mark banknote from the German hyperinflation of the 1920s, surrounded by the motto: "Never Again."

(If you scroll down about halfway, you will also see a picture of yours truly. I'm the fellow in the blue shirt carrying a big sign with a quote from Ayn Rand expressing this "racist" sentiment: "Your life belongs to you and the good is to live it." Clearly code words for the Ku Klux Klan.)

The common theme of the signs was individual rights versus collectivism, an advocacy of limited government held to the restrictions placed on it by the Constitution. One of the signs in the photo essay sums up the message of the tea party rally: "It's the Liberty, Stupid."

The fact that the tea party had such a clear philosophical message, and that the bogus racism smear so thoroughly evades this message, says a lot about the intellectual confidence of the tea party movement—versus the lack of philosophical confidence on the left. The tea partiers are very happy to have a philosophical debate on the most basic political issues. The left, by contrast, wants to change the subject with personal, ad hominem attacks—which indicates that they are not confident that they can win the debate if it stays on the question of the size and role of government.

To say that the left is resorting to "racial politics" is a bit too vague. Let's define exactly what they are doing: they are resorting to a decades-old politics of racial slander, reflexively accusing any opponent of racism in an attempt to shut down discussion.

Racism is one of the worst insults you can throw at someone today, only a few steps up from accusing him of being a child molester. That this is so is, in fact, a tribute to the heroic change in American culture in recent decades. In less than fifty years, America has gone from a country in which segregation was openly enforced and defended to a country in which an accusation of even indirect racism can ruin a man's reputation and career. Just ask Don Imus. But this has come to be used as a weapon—a bludgeon of intimidation wielded by the left.

Barack Obama's color-blind campaign, the idea that he was running as if race didn't matter, promised us an uplifting break from this history. There were indications from the beginning, however, that he didn't really mean it. Obama had to tap dance around his close, longstanding association with the race-baiting preacher Jeremiah Wright, and he sat back while his proxies used accusations of racism as a weapon against the Clinton campaign.

If he could do that in the Democratic primary, there's no reason to think he'll object to those who are doing it again now. Obama allegedly wants to stay out of the current racism smear campaign—but leaders don't get that option. By remaining silent, he is signaling his approval; he is voting "present" on the revival of the racism smear in American politics. This is an enormous disappointment to many people who once voted for Obama—and to many others, like myself, who once saw an element of nobility in his campaign, even if we disagreed with everything else he stood for.

If Obama doesn't immediately and forcefully reject the new racism smear against the tea party movement, then he will have destroyed the last remaining element of his appeal to voters—and he will have made millions of passionate new enemies among the voting public.

"It's Discrimination!"

Mises Daily by Ben O'Neill

If there were a prize for the most boneheaded thing that one hears very frequently, it would have to be the astonishment and revulsion that is commonly expressed at the existence of discrimination. You are likely to have heard this horrified expression before: "It's discrimination!" Heavens above! Alert the authorities!

Quite often, this tiny statement, without any elaboration or explanation, is enough to provoke looks of shock or revulsion from others, or at the very least, solemn looks of concurrence and disapproval. In many cases, it will provoke fervent denials and apologetic defensive maneuvers from those accused of this heinous act, even if the accuser has made no attempt to deliver his case. The mere charge is enough.

People do not often realize it, but when they disparage "discrimination" without any attempt to elaborate or justify what they are talking about, they are disparaging an abstraction. Moreover, they are disparaging an abstraction on which they rely to think — an abstraction without which they would be docile vegetables unable to make sense of the world around them. When someone shrieks "It's discrimination!" the irony is usually lost on them, but without their own discrimination they would not be able to establish that others are discriminating, and be offended by it.

If one does venture to ask questions about why discrimination is to be condemned, one may be treated to a slight elaboration as to what is upsetting people. One may be informed that so-and-so is discriminating on the basis of race, sex, age, sexual orientation, political affiliation, attractiveness, or some other factor that should not be a part of his decision making, and that just settles the matter, consarn it!

But what is relevant to rational thinking, moral conduct, and justice is not whether discrimination has occurred, or even whether such discrimination is made on the basis of some particular set of purportedly prohibited criteria; what should ultimately be at issue is the reasons why the factors used in a decision were used, and whether these factors do indeed form a rational basis for the inferences that underlie discriminatory decisions (by which I mean, all decisions). In assessing the rationality, irrationality, morality, or immorality of particular instances of discrimination, it behooves us to ask the reasons for discrimination and to assess these reasons in the light of the logic of inference. This may sound trite, but it is a step rarely taken in the rush to disparage the ghastly abstraction of "discrimination."

Discrimination and Statistical Inference

Discrimination is ubiquitous. It is not some conceptual defect or manifestation of hatred or stupidity. In its widest and most proper sense, discrimination is merely the drawing of distinctions between things, which is the basis for all concept formation and human knowledge. Whenever we form concepts from observations of the things around us and attempt to integrate these concepts into a consistent whole to form a sensible view of the world, we do so by differentiating between different things on the basis of their observable characteristics. In particular, when we form anthropic concepts — concepts pertaining to man — we do so by discriminating between different types of people on the basis of their observable characteristics. Discrimination between people is the basis for all anthropic concepts and all knowledge about man. It is the means by which we are able to condense all of our many experiences with other people down into some economized conceptual units that can be used to predict the unknown characteristics and behavior of others.

One of the reasons that discrimination is of such predictive value is that, like it or not, human beings have characteristics that are statistically dependent, meaning that, for whatever reason, these characteristics tend to occur with one another or tend not to occur with one another (as opposed to occurring statistically independently of one another). Sometimes these characteristics are causally related, and sometimes they are merely correlated,[1] meaning merely that they tend to appear together (or in the case of negative correlation, tend not to appear together). Discrimination on the basis of observable characteristics can be rationally justified in any situation in which there is a statistical dependence between these characteristics and some other characteristics of direct interest to us, given whatever information is available. In such cases, the predictive characteristic gives us information on the characteristic of ultimate interest to us, even if there is no causal relationship between them.

I'll give you an example: A study by the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under the Law found that taxicab drivers in Washington DC are less likely to pick up young black males than other people, and are less likely to drive passengers of any race to areas of the city with larger proportions of the black population.[2] Does this mean that cab drivers — including many black cab drivers — are incorrigible racists who see blacks as being genetically predisposed to crime? Not at all! To a cab driver in this situation, it doesn't make a lick of difference whether a particular race of people are genetically predisposed to commit crimes or not. All that matters in this context is that race and crime are correlated — they tend to occur together for some reason. And because these things tend to occur together, in the absence of having some more detailed information about a prospective passenger, the driver is correct to use the passenger's race, sex, and age as factors in his decision. He is correct to conclude that picking up a young black man in his cab (as opposed to picking up someone else) will increase the probability that he will be a victim of assault or other criminal conduct. The rational cab driver knows this, and acts accordingly, avoiding fares that he thinks are high risk, based on those characteristics he is able to observe about his prospective passengers.

Discrimination on the basis of predictive characteristics which are correlated with characteristic of direct interest is a form of rational discrimination. While it is often slandered as an injustice, rational discrimination is both rational and morally proper. In fact, since justice is the rational assessment and treatment of other people, rational discrimination is a necessary requirement for justice and the refusal to engage in such discrimination is itself an injustice.[3]

Even sex and race discrimination, the coup de grande of modern taboos, often involve little more than the recognition that these characteristics are correlated with qualities and behaviors that are of legitimate interest in many decisions. When taxi drivers in Washington DC discriminate against young black men in their choice of passengers, they do so because they know that sex, age, and race are all correlated with violent crime, which they wish to avoid. These people are not bigots or morons — they are intelligent people who are implicitly applying the lessons of the science of statistical inference, even if they are only aware of these ideas on an intuitive or "common-sense" level.

Is it a breach of a person's civil rights to be denied taxi service on the basis of their race, sex, or age? According to civil rights groups, it is.[4] But unless one has some inherent right to service from others, then it cannot be a breach of rights when this service is denied, no matter what the grounds for the denial. Indeed, if rights are understood to be grounded in the nonaggression principle, then this must include the right to use one's property in a discriminatory manner, a fortiori when that discrimination is rational.[5]

A cab driver who operates his cab without engaging in rational race discrimination, sex discrimination, or age discrimination does the world no favors. While he will probably end up giving service to people who are not criminals, and who may have been avoided by other drivers, he is also more likely to give service to those who will rob and assault him. If he ignores his own rational inferences then he will weigh the risks against the rewards incorrectly, playing into the hands of violent thugs.[6]

Unfortunately, the cab driver has another set of violent thugs to contend with, since he is the target of the coercion of government and its activist minions. The government who punishes him for his rational inferences not only does the world no favors; it violates his rights and entrenches a system of mandatory irrationality that compels him to ignore relevant information in the decision problem he is faced with. Its antidiscrimination laws not only involve an unwarranted aggression, but they involve aggression in the pursuit of mandatory irrationality.

The absence of discrimination between people would make it impossible to gain a conceptual understanding of man and would force us to operate at a purely perceptual level, either treating people as interchangeable blobs without differentiation, or treating each person as a completely new and exceptional phenomenon. It would put us in the position of starry-eyed infants who observe each new thing as a unique and unknown phenomenon to be stared at in vacant wonderment.

Trite allegations of discrimination, usually made without any elaboration, completely ignore the relevant issue. What is crucial in evaluating other people is not whether we discriminate on the basis of this or that characteristic but whether the characteristics we use form a rational basis for our inferences. Are the distinctions that we draw sensible inferences based on genuine causal or empirical relationships between observed characteristics, or are they arbitrary judgments based on spurious ideas with no basis in reality? In short, the relevant issue is whether the discrimination we engage in is rational or irrational, not whether it is discrimination on this ground or that.

Notwithstanding the shrieks of horror that one is likely to encounter from the equity-and-diversity intelligentsia, this applies as much to race and sex discrimination as to any other form of judgment and discrimination. What matters is not whether characteristics like race, sex, and age are used as means of differentiation and judgment but whether they are used rationally to infer other characteristics of interest on the basis of some known correlation or causal relationship between them.

The Antidiscrimination Paradigm

When you hear someone express with indignation that "It's discrimination!" — without any attempt at elaboration — you may be sure that they have absorbed the basic ideas of the antidiscrimination paradigm which forms the basis for modern "civil-rights" legislation and the attendant drive for political correctness. At its root, the antidiscrimination paradigm asserts the abhorrence of discrimination per se, not merely discrimination on particular grounds. Article 26 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights makes this clear when it directs that "the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."[7] This explains why no further elaboration is thought to be needed once discrimination has been established. "It's discrimination!" is all that is needed to establish a breach of civil "rights" and the consequent moral outrage.

To see the complete implications of the antidiscrimination paradigm, observe that, although race and sex are often used as the thin end of the wedge in public discussion, antidiscrimination laws and the accompanying moral crusade for political correctness both continue to expand to outlaw discrimination on the basis of more and more of the characteristics of man. From initially narrow and innocuous beginnings, antidiscrimination laws in most Western countries have now expanded to prohibit discrimination (including rational discrimination) on the grounds of race, sex, age, disability, sexuality, marital status, pregnancy, potential pregnancy, breastfeeding, and family and career responsibilities. There is no end in sight to this expansion, with calls to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of attractiveness[8] and social status[9] receiving serious attention.

The sole impediment to this expansion has been the normal inertia of political change, with each new expansion meeting withering resistance until it becomes a normal and allegedly indispensable part of antidiscrimination law. Throughout this process, the general philosophical principle that implicitly or explicitly forms the basis for change is that discrimination on any ground is abhorrent. This is what is said, and this is precisely and literally what is meant.

Unfortunately, many libertarians who oppose antidiscrimination laws accept the false position that discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, age, and other demographic criteria is necessarily morally abhorrent.[10] While one may commend the delineation of moral and political issues that this entails, this position understates the seriousness of the issue. Antidiscrimination laws should not be seen as bad methods in the pursuit of good goals. They are bad methods in the pursuit of a tyrannical goal.

In fact, the only possible logical goal of the antidiscrimination paradigm is the complete elimination of discrimination and the institution of an all-pervasive quota system in every field of human activity.[11] In such a context, it is not enough to remain agnostic about moral issues involving discrimination. One must fully analyze the inferential foundations of discrimination and defend the moral legitimacy of instances of rational discrimination from knee-jerk attacks.

One often hears the assertion that discrimination is based on ignorance and prejudice. While this is certainly the case for some forms of irrational discrimination, it is not true for discrimination that is based on a rational assessment of the relationship between observable characteristics and unobservable characteristics of legitimate interest in judgment and decision making. As I have explained elsewhere,

The antidiscrimination paradigm, which holds all discrimination to be irrational, is contradictory to basic principles of rational inference and prediction. Far from identifying irrational behavior based on ignorance and prejudice, the antidiscrimination paradigm is itself irrational and is itself based on ignorance and prejudice — ignorance of the principles of rational inference, and a baseless prejudice that there must be empirical equality among racial groups.[12]

One often hears of the great danger of irrational discrimination based on false ideas like racism. But there is also a serious danger in the refusal to acknowledge the inferential and moral legitimacy of instances of rational discrimination. If instances of rational discrimination are falsely understood to be manifestations of bigotry and hatred, then this can only create and sustain acrimony and hostility between groups of people, a trend which has manifested itself in a repressive system of coercive planning known as antidiscrimination law.

It's the Economy, Stupid

The Obama presidency will rise or fall on results.

KARL ROVE

Tomorrow will likely bring more bad news for President Barack Obama on the number one issue for voters -- the economy. The Labor Department's monthly job report will almost certainly show unemployment topping 9%, with a couple hundred thousand more jobs lost in May.

It will get worse before jobs get better. Congressional Budget Director Douglas W. Elmendorf recently predicted that unemployment will continue rising into the second half of next year and peak above 10%.

Mr. Obama has an ingenious approach to job losses: He describes them as job gains. For example, last week the president claimed that 150,000 jobs had been created or saved because of his stimulus package. He boasted, "And that's just the beginning."

However, at the beginning of January, 134.3 million people were employed. At the start of May, 132.4 million Americans were working. How was Mr. Obama magically able to conjure this loss of 1.9 million jobs into an increase of 150,000 jobs?

As my former White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto points out on his blog, the Labor Department does not and cannot collect data on "jobs saved." So the Obama administration is asking that we accept its "clairvoyant ability to estimate," and the White House press corps has let Mr. Obama's ludicrous claim go virtually unchallenged.

About Karl Rove

Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy making process.

Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.

Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster. Email the author at Karl@Rove.com or visit him on the web at Rove.com.

Or, you can send him a Tweet @karlrove.

Still, there are limits to Mr. Obama's rhetorical tricks. Even he cannot turn job losses into real job gains. And he won't be rescued by stimulus spending.

Former National Economic Council Director Keith Hennessey made a persuasive case on his blog that the stimulus will be ineffective because the additional economic growth it spurs will come six to nine months later than it could have.

This is partly because, as the Congressional Budget Office estimates, only $185 billion (23% of a $787 billion stimulus package) will be spent this fiscal year. The government will spend an additional $399 billion next fiscal year. The balance -- $203 billion -- will be spent between fiscal years 2011 and 2019, long after the economy has turned on its own power and for its own reasons. In addition, much of the stimulus that went this year for tax cuts and transfer payments has been saved, not spent. (The national savings rate went from less than 0% to about 5%.)

If the Obama administration were more serious about growing the economy than just growing government, the stimulus would have been front-loaded into this fiscal year.

In addition, the claim made by Team Obama that every dollar in stimulus translates into a dollar-and-a-half in growth is economic fiction. The costs of stimulus reduce future growth. No country has ever spent itself to prosperity. The price of stimulus has to be paid sometime.

Any real improvement in the economy so far is more likely the result of the Federal Reserve expanding the money supply and the Fed and Treasury shoring up the financial sector.

But the Fed's actions are risky. Easy money and expansionary policies are not sustainable. We may soon be in for a bout of inflation unless the Fed soaks up much of the money it flooded into the system. The government is also likely to hamper private investment as it uses a vast amount of capital to finance its debt. And when the Fed stomps on its monetary brakes, as eventually it must, we'll get sluggish growth.

The irony for Democrats is that the Fed may hit the brakes in the run-up to the 2010 congressional elections or the 2012 presidential election.

It is becoming clear that the economy is now the top issue. Mr. Obama's presidency may well rise or fall on it. The economy will be his responsibility long before next year's elections. Americans may give him a chance to turn things around, but voters can turn unforgiving very quickly if promised jobs don't materialize.

That's what happened in Louisiana, where voters accepted Democrat Gov. Kathleen Blanco's missteps before Hurricane Katrina but brutally rejected her afterward because she failed to turn the state around.

Until now, the new president has benefited from public willingness to give him a honeymoon. He decided to use that grace period to push for the largest expansion of government in U.S. history and to reward political allies (see the sweetheart deals Big Labor received in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies).

The difficulty for Mr. Obama will be when the public sees where his decisions lead -- higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher taxes, sluggish growth, and a jobless recovery.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

It's the Economy, Stupid

The Obama presidency will rise or fall on results.

KARL ROVE

Tomorrow will likely bring more bad news for President Barack Obama on the number one issue for voters -- the economy. The Labor Department's monthly job report will almost certainly show unemployment topping 9%, with a couple hundred thousand more jobs lost in May.

It will get worse before jobs get better. Congressional Budget Director Douglas W. Elmendorf recently predicted that unemployment will continue rising into the second half of next year and peak above 10%.

Mr. Obama has an ingenious approach to job losses: He describes them as job gains. For example, last week the president claimed that 150,000 jobs had been created or saved because of his stimulus package. He boasted, "And that's just the beginning."

However, at the beginning of January, 134.3 million people were employed. At the start of May, 132.4 million Americans were working. How was Mr. Obama magically able to conjure this loss of 1.9 million jobs into an increase of 150,000 jobs?

As my former White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto points out on his blog, the Labor Department does not and cannot collect data on "jobs saved." So the Obama administration is asking that we accept its "clairvoyant ability to estimate," and the White House press corps has let Mr. Obama's ludicrous claim go virtually unchallenged.

About Karl Rove

Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy making process.

Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.

Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster. Email the author at Karl@Rove.com or visit him on the web at Rove.com.

Or, you can send him a Tweet @karlrove.

Still, there are limits to Mr. Obama's rhetorical tricks. Even he cannot turn job losses into real job gains. And he won't be rescued by stimulus spending.

Former National Economic Council Director Keith Hennessey made a persuasive case on his blog that the stimulus will be ineffective because the additional economic growth it spurs will come six to nine months later than it could have.

This is partly because, as the Congressional Budget Office estimates, only $185 billion (23% of a $787 billion stimulus package) will be spent this fiscal year. The government will spend an additional $399 billion next fiscal year. The balance -- $203 billion -- will be spent between fiscal years 2011 and 2019, long after the economy has turned on its own power and for its own reasons. In addition, much of the stimulus that went this year for tax cuts and transfer payments has been saved, not spent. (The national savings rate went from less than 0% to about 5%.)

If the Obama administration were more serious about growing the economy than just growing government, the stimulus would have been front-loaded into this fiscal year.

In addition, the claim made by Team Obama that every dollar in stimulus translates into a dollar-and-a-half in growth is economic fiction. The costs of stimulus reduce future growth. No country has ever spent itself to prosperity. The price of stimulus has to be paid sometime.

Any real improvement in the economy so far is more likely the result of the Federal Reserve expanding the money supply and the Fed and Treasury shoring up the financial sector.

But the Fed's actions are risky. Easy money and expansionary policies are not sustainable. We may soon be in for a bout of inflation unless the Fed soaks up much of the money it flooded into the system. The government is also likely to hamper private investment as it uses a vast amount of capital to finance its debt. And when the Fed stomps on its monetary brakes, as eventually it must, we'll get sluggish growth.

The irony for Democrats is that the Fed may hit the brakes in the run-up to the 2010 congressional elections or the 2012 presidential election.

It is becoming clear that the economy is now the top issue. Mr. Obama's presidency may well rise or fall on it. The economy will be his responsibility long before next year's elections. Americans may give him a chance to turn things around, but voters can turn unforgiving very quickly if promised jobs don't materialize.

That's what happened in Louisiana, where voters accepted Democrat Gov. Kathleen Blanco's missteps before Hurricane Katrina but brutally rejected her afterward because she failed to turn the state around.

Until now, the new president has benefited from public willingness to give him a honeymoon. He decided to use that grace period to push for the largest expansion of government in U.S. history and to reward political allies (see the sweetheart deals Big Labor received in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies).

The difficulty for Mr. Obama will be when the public sees where his decisions lead -- higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher taxes, sluggish growth, and a jobless recovery.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

It's Cuba's Turn to Make Overture, Obama Says

LAURA MECKLER DAVID LUHNOW

MEXICO CITY -- President Barack Obama said his administration had gone as far as it would for now in easing U.S. policy toward Cuba, and that he would wait for reciprocal gestures from Havana before taking further action.

This week, the U.S. lifted restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island nation and moved to open telecommunications links, but the president declined to lift restrictions on travel by other Americans or to call for a lifting of the half-century-old U.S. embargo.

AFP/Getty Images

U.S. President Barack Obama waves next to Mexican President Felipe Calderón during the welcoming ceremony at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City.

His steps weren't enough for his Mexican host, President Felipe Calderón, and the U.S. leader is likely to face pressure to move further when he attends the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago starting Friday.

"The embargo has been in place since before President Obama and I were born," Mr. Calderón said at a joint news conference here Thursday with Mr. Obama. "And the Cuban regime is still there. I think it's time to ask if maybe the strategy hasn't worked too well. I don't believe that it has."

Mr. Obama said he had already taken significant steps. "I think what you saw was a show of good faith on the part of the United States that we want to recast our relationship," he said. "Having taken the first step I think it's very much in our interests to see whether Cuba is also ready to change."

He said that the Cuban government could take any variety of steps in a sign of good will. "I'm optimistic that progress can be made if there is a spirit that's looking forward rather than backward," Mr. Obama said. "We want to be open to engagement but we're going to do so in a systematic way."

In Cumana, Venezuela, Cuban President Raúl Castro replied that his government is willing to discuss "everything" with Washington, including human rights, political prisoners and freedom of the press, the Associated Press reported. Mr. Castro said Havana has "sent word to the U.S. government in private and in public" that it is open to talking about anything, as long as it is "on equal terms."

President Obama Heads to Mexico

1:22

President Obama meets with Mexican president Felipe Calderon in Mexico City to talk about restoring and sustaining economic growth in Mexico and the U.S. Video courtesy of Fox News.

Going South

Take a look back at some U.S. presidents' first stops south of the Rio Grande.

View Slideshow

Associated Press

President Gerald Ford visits Magdalena, Mexico, on Oct. 22, 1974.

• U.S. Pledges to Stem Flow of Guns
• Discuss: Violence in Mexico in the next year

Some analysts in Latin America argue that Cuba is never going to reciprocate to U.S. gestures, because the Communist regime uses the U.S. embargo as a ready-made excuse to explain the island's woes to its people. Mr. Calderón encouraged Mr. Obama to take bolder steps anyway.

At their news conference, Mr. Obama also backed away from immediate action on two of his campaign promises -- to push for reinstatement of the assault-weapons ban, something Mexico would like to see, and to try to renegotiate labor and environmental provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a move Mexico opposes.

On assault weapons, Mr. Obama said he still supports the ban but recognizes that it is a tough political battle that could take time. "None of us are under any illusion that reinstating that ban would be easy, and so what we've focused on is how we can improve our enforcement of existing laws," he said.

For his part, Mr. Calderón said he understood it is a "thorny issue," but asked American policy makers to bear in mind that those weapons "are today aimed at Mexican government officials and citizens."

On Nafta, Mr. Obama said that given the current economic crisis, now was not the time to slow trade by opening the trade deal to revision. He added that any move to do so should proceed in a "careful and deliberate" way. "We want to encourage trade, not discourage it," he said.

Mr. Obama also promised U.S. support for the Mexican war against drug cartels, saying he greatly admires Mr. Calderón's unprecedented crackdown. The U.S. must support its neighbor by working to reduce demand for drugs and stemming the illegal flow of guns south, he said. Nine in 10 guns confiscated in Mexico came from the U.S., both men said.

"I will not pretend this is Mexico's responsibility alone," Mr. Obama said.

He said he would push the Senate to ratify a Latin American arms-trafficking treaty that was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1997 but never ratified. It aims to curb guns and ammunition trafficking, and an administration official said the U.S. has been abiding by it even though it hasn't been ratified.

Mr. Calderón said Mexico's crackdown on drug gangs was already bearing fruit, with a sharp decline in killings associated with the trade during the first three months of this year compared with the last three months of 2008.

In the same way that Mr. Obama said the U.S. bore responsibility for the demand for drugs that drives the trade, Mr. Calderón also said Mexico bears responsibility for its citizens that go to the U.S. to look for work illegally. "We are working hard to create the kinds of opportunities here in Mexico so that people don't have to leave," he said.