Predictions

I received a number of text, email and messages through social media on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.   I noticed a decidedly upbeat tone in most of them this year.   Despite a bruising election that left an electorate bitterly divided, sometimes within families, I noted an enthusiasm and spirit that had been absent for a long time.  Most said, “2017 is gonna be great!” or something similar.

I usually shun making predictions.  And when I do make them, I usually hedge or couch them in terms of probabilities.  I made one prediction last year.  Back in January, I set out all the reasons I thought Trump COULD win it all, but I had great doubts over whether he would prevail over the Clinton machine, allied with academia, the mainstream media and Hollywood.  Paul Krugman has no such reservations, and declared the market would “never recover” from a Trump presidency (up 10% so far).  I, on the other hand, subscribe to the Yogi Berra view of forecasting, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Nonetheless, I will make two and only two for 2017.

First, the day to day lives of most Americans will improve on most dimensions and African Americans will experience the largest gains.  Second,  a serious international crisis will flare early in the year. 

Despite the low unemployment rate and the nominally expanding GDP, there has been a pall hanging over the country during the Obama administration.  What is that pall?  Why aren’t we feeling better?  It is the pall of big government and the inability of liberals to experience cognitive dissonance.  None other than Barack Obama personifies this lack of ability to experience or feel cognitive than Barack Obama, who famously chirped, “ISIS is contained,” the day before the attacks on Paris.  Fittingly, he has chosen Chicago, and the South Side locale of McCormick Place to deliver his farewell address, presumably to puff his chest and sing about all of his policy accomplishments, a 3 minute Uber ride from the most dangerous territory outside Mosul. 

Heather MacDonald has written and spoken extensively  on the Obama administration’s War on Police, and his campaign to restrain law enforcement has borne fruit in Chicago.  762 murders—up 56% over last year’s total of 480.  Just as telling, arrests are down 28%.  4,331 people were shot, including a young athlete from C.V.S. shot several times on his front porch, who, miraculously lived and is returning to play basketball.  

Obama has avoided the South Side and has been completely silent about the bloodbath in the city that gave him his political birth.   Yet, the nation’s first African American president returns triumphantly to Chicago—the bluest city in the bluest county in a deep blue state, where African Americans are being slaughtered by the dozens every week—11 on Christmas alone. You would have thought the shooting deaths of young blacks like beautiful aspiring young model Kaylyn Pryor (killed in a drive by and pictured above) or the grandson of longtime Congressman Danny Davis would have spurred Obama to action---some bold, innovative proposal.    But Obama rarely visited the South Side, hardly mentioned it throughout his two terms, and responded only by embracing Black Lives Matter and proposing gun control measures that would have done nothing to stanch the bleeding.  Obama took to the podium for street thug Michael Brown but not for Kaylyn Pryor.

Besides the violence, Chicago has a failed school system and the state of Illinois is bleeding both cash and people.  Democrats, led by Mike Madigan, have fought tooth and nail against any sensible fiscal reforms proposed by Republican Governer Rauner.  As 2017 dawns, Illinois has $11 billion in unpaid bills. High earners—including professional and working class blacks—are fleeing the state.

Obama couldn’t have chosen a more inappropriate place to talk about his policy achievements.  Illinois and Chicago are about as close to failed states as you can get in the U.S.   I guarantee that President Obama’s address will not answer the question that Reagan famously asked in 1980, and should be asked, especially by African Americans in Chicago, “Are you better off now than you were eight years ago?”

Second, there will be a serious international crisis in 2017.   There are just too many potential hotspots for it not to happen.  After eight years of the inmates running the asylum, pushing the U.S. around at every turn with no reaction from the Obama administration, at least bad actors across the globe will test Trump’s meddle to see what he is made of. Over the past few years we had China hack the OPM and build a military base in the South China Sea.  Russia invaded Crimea, established itself as the predominate power in the Middle East, buzzed our planes, and possibly tried to influence our election (Obama initial response, “Cut it out!”).   Iran seized our sailors, held them at gunpoint and squeezed $400 million in cash from the U.S., and provoked our warships with speedboats.  North Korea tested a hydrogen bomb and appears to be on the brink of testing an ICBM.  ISIS has shown an ability to project or inspire violence into Europe with some regularity and it is not beyond the boundaries of imagination that they can inflict casualties here too.

The Obama administration inflicted an enormous amount of damage to U.S. global leadership and stability.

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• The unenforced “red line” in Syria was the most detrimental and grievous mistake.   Every grade school teacher knows the consequences of empty threats.  Every rival and bad actor across the globe saw this and took note.
•  Eliminating two theater war capacity.  Until 2012, the Pentagon had a two-war strategy, meaning we retained the capability to fight in two different major theaters simultaneously.  Obama called a halt to this doctrine.  Now, if we are required to repel a Russian incursion into the Baltics, we are exposed if North Korea invades the South or if China attacks Taiwan.
•  Leading from behind.   This is the most nonsensical concept since Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks.
  
•  Unilateral concessions.  Obama made a series of unilateral concessions tied to receiving nothing in return.  He gave up installing missile defense in the Czech Republic and Poland simply because Russia squawked.  He gave Cuba diplomatic recognition and received nothing for it.  And he chased Iran around like a love struck schoolgirl, gave them cash, and their behavior hasn’t changed even a smidgen.
•  Abandoning friends – Obama snubbed the solidarity walk after the terror attacks in Europe,  abruptly told the Poles and Czechs that we were abandoning missile defense on their soil and as Obama was exiting, kicked the Israelis in the shins by withholding our veto at the U.N. after making the statement that “we have your backs.”

There will be a huge price to pay for these egregious errors.  Taken together,  these positions have signaled to the world that the U.S. does not wish to defend its interests or the interests of its allies with much vigor.  These totalitarian states and nonstate actors have not paid a price for aggression and defiance of international norms of behavior.  There is no shortage of bad actors that will be willing to test the boundaries of President Trump, to learn if he is just a bag of wind or whether he has the stomach to back up what he says.  I predict that that test will come soon and will most likely come from North Korea or possibly an incursion into the Baltics by Russia.

2017 arrives with a great deal of uncertainty and only the brave will make many predictions, but on balance, I think 2017 will be a good year.   And if the only progress we make is to have fewer senseless deaths of young people like Kaylyn, I'm ok with that.