The “peace dividend” was the windfall financial benefit expected by the U.S. to begin in 1991, with the ending of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union. The breakup was expected to permit a reduction in this country’s needs for national defense, resulting in a budgetary surplus. But the U.S., under all Presidents since the breakup, has reserved substantially-reduced levels of spending for national defense, but has chosen not to apply the resulting savings to reduce our national debt. Instead, we have used those savings to jack up our levels of domestic expenditures.

Like Rome two thousand years ago, we have given up on using military force to protect our borders and our allies (our “active virtue,” as Gibbon put it), and our domestic economy, dragged down by corruption, fiscal ineptitude, and the continuing absence of vigorous and competent leadership, has ceased to grow. The more-privileged of our citizens, like those of Rome, have abandoned child-rearing and turned to partying hard while the good times still roll. (Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.) Like Rome, we no longer think we can afford to maintain, much less expand, our territorial limits, and the barbarians, as quickly as they get the message, are at the gates. The pace of the attacks is escalating. Unfortunately for the U.S., our re-enactment of the decline and fall of Rome is taking place while we are on Internet Time.  While it took 500 years for all of the barbarians to get word that Rome was theirs for the taking, nowadays it has only taken 7 years for the world to figure out that our President is a pushover.

For an example, consider this: “North Korea reportedly willing to sign peace treaty with US to end conflict” (as reported on Fox News online on 10/19) – at

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/18/north-korea-reportedly-seeks-to-end-conflict-with-us-with-peace-treaty/?intcmp=hpbt1

Things are changing in a hurry. By the time President Obama’s term ends, by the time his “transformation” of the U.S. has been accomplished, there may be nothing left of America’s longstanding position as the sole barrier between civilization and today’s “barbarians” – the parts of the world dominated by the autocratic and brutal leaders of today’s Axis of Evil nations. Would anyone who could afford to leave South Korea choose to remain there after the U.S. presence had been terminated by an arrangement negotiated by the U.S. President who negotiated, over the vehement objections of Congress, the deal that allows Iran to develop nuclear weapons – and gives them a financial bonus – in exchange for an unenforceable promise to defer that development for a few years? Can anyone imagine a Korean withdrawal, negotiated by this White House, that would advance the interests of the U.S. in Asia or the world?

Went shopping for a new otolaryngologist this week, found myself looking up everything I could find on ENT doctors in my area. After sorting through what Google had to offer, I identified my #1 choice. Soon after, I heard from my internist’s office with their recommendation (which I had sought 2 weeks earlier), and guess what? Their #1 recommendation was the same doctor!

Got to thinking: what was it about my pick that had stood out, that persuaded me to rate him #1? Reluctantly had to recall that most of the ENT people in my area had similar resumes, and that the only thing about my #1 that had caught my fancy was that he has an Asian name and that part of his education and training occurred in Asia. My next thought: Gee, does that make me a racist or bigot? And then I answered myself: No, I am merely being rational. Here is why:

When I was growing up, the archetypal doctor was the Jewish doctor. Jews were supposed to be good at certain things, one of which was medicine. A Jewish doctor, it went without saying, was a good doctor. Only much later did I realize there was a sad but objectively-verifiable reason for this: for a Jew to become a doctor (or a lawyer, for that matter), he or she had to be really, really good, because higher education in America, beginning at least as early as the 1920s, had adopted a rigorous system of religious quotas in its admissions policies. It is now known for certain that Harvard (among many others) decided, in the 1920s, that it was admitting and graduating too many Jews, and so Harvard and a great many other schools put strict limits on the number of Jews they admitted.

Several decades later, the educational establishment came to terms with what they had done, and they finally abolished the quotas. But the quotas, while they lasted, had had the effect of denying admission to Jews unless they were exceptionally well-qualified – certainly better qualified than many of the non-Jews admitted. Obvious consequence: For more than a generation, if you were a Jew who made it through college and medical school, you were exceptionally good. Practical lesson the country learned: if in doubt, hire a Jewish doctor, and you can be pretty sure you got a good doctor.

Alas, now, decades later, things ostensibly are different. But now that schools are no longer discriminating against Jews, they have simply adopted the catchy rubric of “diversity” and moved on to another target: Asian-Americans. Nowadays, the process is more subtle – not outright quotas, but affirmative-action programs, “race-norming,” admission of the top X% of graduates of any high school in a particular state or other sector, and other devices that effectively resurrect the quota system by inflating the admissions of certain applicants – and thereby limiting the admissions of others. (The schools deny it, but the numbers speak for themselves.) In this updated version of the quota system, it is well-documented that Asian-American applicants are the main victims and African American applicants are the main beneficiaries. So, now that we are so much more enlightened about discrimination, Asian Americans are the new Jews when it comes to evaluating credentials; if you were an Asian American who made it through college and medical school, you were exceptionally good. Practical lesson: if in doubt, hire an Asian doctor, and you can be pretty sure you got a good doctor.

Turns out my instincts had led me in the right direction. By picking the Asian, I had picked the best available doctor.

Watching a recent History Channel reprise of the charge that Soviet Premier Khrushchev ordered missiles installed in Cuba because he considered JFK to be weak and ineffectual, one was reminded of one of the oldest, most-validated aphorisms in the history of international relations: weakness invites aggression.

The international left, since Kennedy’s death, has been developing intricate refutations of that theory, and such denial has reached its apogee under President Obama. But it appears that the leaders of each of today’s Axis of Evil countries would agree with Khrushchev’s alleged strategy, and that each of them is preparing to execute that strategy. Just take a look at the recent provocations issued by the authoritarian regimes in Russia, North Korea, and Iran, and by China.

The next 15 months could prove to be the most dangerous period in the history of our nation. From the perspective of the Bad Guys, that period will represent a once-in-a- century opportunity to take down the Great Satan, the Unites States. We have a President who might as well be walking around with a “Kick Me” sign on his back, who has shown he is a pushover in the negotiation of treaties (oops, one is not to call them treaties), who has shown he has no answer for Chinese aggression in the South China Sea or for Russian aggression in the Middle East and in the former Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe. No matter how often Iran demands yet another re-negotiation of the nuclear non-treaty, the President rushes to capitulate. Where is JFK when we need him?

Do not be surprised if those rogue regimes determine that it is now-or-never for their dream of taking us down, that the pace of their confrontational behavior must be accelerated, and that they cannot afford the risk of America’s electing another President before their predations are completed. Things might move quickly.

Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio stole the show. What a relief, what a pleasant surprise. What a great ticket the two of them would make, not just because of its impact upon female voters and Latino voters, not just because it would be the most effective counter to the only thing the Clinton candidacy still has going for it (“first female President,” etc.), but because these two are so competent, so verbally quick and concise, so well-informed on both the economy and national defense, and so strong on all the issues the Republican Party – in its sane intervals – has stood for, going back all the way to when the Democratic Party was the party of racial segregation and the GOP was the liberal party. I haven’t felt so good about a potential ticket since Ronald Reagan ran for President along with whoever-it-was that shared the ticket with him in his two elections.

Carly could be our own Golda Meir but with a prettier face. The woman who is tougher than all the men in the room. The visionary CEO who got dumped by Hewlett Packard but is now supported by the guy who led the revolt against her, the guy who has now acknowledged that Carly was right and he and his colleagues were wrong. After she got the economy rolling again and our international role re-established, she could deliver the reins into the competent hands of her younger VP.

This is addressed to those who believe the Republicans should not nominate a Presidential candidate who has little or no political experience. In particular, this is addressed to those who believe the failures of the Obama administration were caused by the President’s lack of political experience prior to his 2008 election, by the fact that his career in public office before his 2008 election to the presidency consisted of a mere 8 years in the Illinois State Senate and 4 years in the U.S. Senate, which left him insufficiently prepared for the U.S. presidency.

Mr. Obama’s experience in holding public office prior to the presidency (12 years) was greater than that of George Washington (2 years as President of the Constitutional Convention), greater than that of Abraham Lincoln (8 years in Illinois House of Representatives, 2 years in U.S. House of Representatives), greater than that of Ronald Reagan (8 years as Governor of California), and approximately the same as that of John F. Kennedy (6 years in the U.S. House, 6 years in the U.S. Senate). While it could be said that Washington, Lincoln, Reagan, and Kennedy each had a keen and active interest in politics before being elected to office, it appears that Barack Obama has been intensely involved in politics for many years – probably for most of his adult life.

It is submitted that Mr. Obama would not have been a better President, or even a different President, if he had had more experience in politics before assuming the presidency. It is the President’s political ideology that has defined his presidency and determined his goals, and he has been unwilling to compromise on those goals. He has refused to work with Congress in order to obtain even a modicum of bipartisan support for his agenda. If the President is no Reagan, no LBJ, in charming and manipulating the loyal opposition, it is not because he is lacking in charm, it is because he has no interest in compromising on his ideological goals.

If the Obama presidency may be viewed as a failure, the cause is not that he has been flawed as a politician or political leader, and it is not that he has been willing to ride roughshod over Congress both in proposing legislation (e.g., ObamaCare) and in directing the issuance of Executive Orders and agency regulations (e.g., “net neutrality”). His lack of finesse might have been excused if those laws, orders, and regulations had supported a more-moderate agenda or a more popular one.

But the President deliberately chose to pursue a shockingly-radical ideology and agenda for which there was little popular support. Consider the de facto nationalization of our healthcare system, our financial sector, and the Internet; the farcical pretense that 6 years were insufficient time to review the Keystone Pipeline; the refusal to enforce our immigration laws; the systematic dismantling of our armed forces; the indulging of Russia and Iran and Cuba while we treat Israel as an enemy instead of an ally; the toleration of Chinese bullying in the South China Sea; and the massive expansion of our national debt, nominally to “prime the pump” and stimulate an economic recovery that has never happened.

None of these actions enjoyed widespread popular support, none was a response to popular demand. This was not a matter of politics or political tactics; it was not a matter of the President’s having spent insufficient time as an elected legislator or governor. As most sentient Illinois residents knew, long before the 2008 election, this President is all about ideology – specifically, a political and moral ideology derived from Black Liberation theology rather than Christianity, from Saul Alinsky rather than the Founding Fathers, from Frank Marshall Davis rather than JFK.

Donald Trump may not be a conservative, or even a Republican, but his flaws as a Republican presidential candidate arise from his style and personality and temperament, his ignorance of the case for free markets rather than central planning, his open advocacy of an international trade-war, and his pugnacity on matters of national defense and border security. His flaws have little to do with his lack of experience in government. Indeed, that lack of experience is at the heart of his appeal. Carly Fiorina, another politically-inexperienced candidate, is clearly a Republican, though she may disturb some conservatives with the nature and depth of the “compassion” in her conservatism. But Ms. Fiorina’s flaws as a presidential candidate do not arise from her failure to have been elected to the U.S. Senate – or from her failure to win her battle over the control and direction of Hewlett Packard.

Political experience is no longer a positive credential, perhaps not even a relevant one. The country wants substance, good ideas, and the ability to communicate and lead.