PRESIDENCY AND PUNDITRY UNPLUGGED

THE BUSH DIARIES: A Citizen’s Review of the First Term
Jack Nargundkar

(Germantown, MD, July 21, 2005)— 7/7 has put President Bush’s oft-repeated claim—“We will fight the terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home” —on notice. While announcing the release today of his first book, The Bush Diaries, author Jack Nargundkar echoed a growing American sentiment relating to the efficacy of this policy in stopping homegrown terrorists:

“I suspect that both, a botched implementation of the Bush Doctrine and the media’s pre-Iraq war complacency, are responsible for our current quandary, which keeps us all in a state of perpetual anxiety with respect to our way of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! This isn’t the way it was supposed to be?”

In The Bush Diaries, Jack Nargundkar recommends that the United States commit to two critical Cs in our foreign relations, especially when it comes to Muslim nations. A foreign policy that reflects our core values and one that is applied consistently; but one that forsakes convenience by refusing to make policy exceptions for allied countries with values that are antithetical to our own.

On the evolving Iran-Iraq relationship, Jack Nargundkar writes in The Bush Diaries,

“I think that Shia hegemony as a counter-balance to Sunni Arab supremacy—if allowed to proceed as a natural evolution of the new realpolitik in the Middle East—could benefit us in the long-term, without the need for another preemptive war in the short-term.”

In The Bush Diaries, Jack Nargundkar kept tabs on what the political pundits—at The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times—had to say about the President’s policies and responded to them in real time. Some of his opinions were published by each one of these prestigious newspapers. The key difference between The Bush Diaries and other books on President Bush: Jack Nargundkar comments not only on the performance of the President, but he also critiques the media pundits who evaluate the presidency.

Jack Nargundkar has spent over 20 years as a marketing professional in the global software and telecommunications industries. As a first generation Indian-American, Jack Nargundkar brings a unique perspective to U.S. economic and foreign policy. An Executive Education Fellow at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Jack Nargundkar has a BSEE from Bombay University and an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York City.

THE BUSH DIARIES: A Citizen’s Review of the First Term
290 pp, $19.95
ISBN: 0-595-35898-5
Author: Jack Nargundkar
Publisher: iUniverse
Publication Date: July 2005
Available From: Ingram Book Group, Baker & Taylor, and iUniverse
To order: call 1-800-AUTHORS or go online at any of the following:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0595358985/qid=1123084435/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/102-5718978-7163300?v=glance&s=books

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=Xy63I1dBQR&isbn=0595358985&itm=3





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Media Contact:
Jack Nargundkar
(240) 426-7018
j.nargundkar@att.net
www.nargundkar.com/jack.htm
http://politicalpotpourri.blogspot.com/

Throttling the Supply Side Spin

At the outset, I have to praise The Wall Street Journal editorial page for reproducing a graph that can actually be interpreted in a bipartisan manner. I refer, of course, to their cocky editorial entitled, "Windfall for Washington" in today’s paper. While gloating over this year’s "revenue surge from investment income", they also

"thank heaven for the tax cuts that have helped to spur the economy that is now throwing off higher tax revenues. As the chart shows, those revenues are now rising back to their modern average as a share of GDP, just as supporters of the tax cuts predicted."

Here is the wonderful chart—which exemplifies the meaning of the phrase "a picture is better than a thousand words"—that they refer to:

Now, as far as my eye can see, revenue receipts per this chart have been over the 40-year historical average of 18.2% in only two sustained periods: 1980-82 and 1994-2001. As readers will recall, the Reagan tax cuts first went into effect in 1981 and then again in 1986. This graph clearly shows that revenue receipts, except for minor blips in 1987 and 1989, were below the 40-year historical average not only through the "seven fat years (1983-1989)" of the Reagan presidency, but also through the three lean years (1990-92) of Bush 41. Revenue receipts then began their climb over the 40-year historical average in the "seven fat years (1994-2001)" of the Clinton presidency. After the "trifecta" of 2001—recession, Bush 43’s first tax cuts, and 9/11—hit the U.S. economy, revenue receipts plunged sharply below the 40-year historical average through the remaining three years (2002-2004) of the Bush 43 first term!

These facts are there for the naked eye to see—we have been bitten twice by the supply side bug in the past 25 years, without sustained revenue rebounds. For readers that might be interested, I have presented more empirical data on this subject in my new book, "The Bush Diaries", which is being published by iUniverse next month. Notwithstanding this year’s upward surge in revenues and OMB’s optimistic estimate through 2010, I would wait at least another couple of years before celebrating any "Windfall for Washington".

London - At Sixes and Sevens

Jolly old London gave new meaning to a typical English phrase, “at sixes and sevens”, when a string of bombs went off in the heart of the city the day after it had been selected as the venue for the 2012 Olympics. Brits were truly at sixes and sevens – on the sixth, they were in seventh heaven after London trumped Paris to become the host city for the 2012 Olympics, but the very next day, on the seventh, their euphoria was abruptly deep-sixed by the bombings.

Back home newspaper editorials were spinning this tragedy in line with their respective ideologies. Thus, in my left hand, The New York Times wondered “why the wealthy nations have not done enough about the root causes of terrorism and why Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden continue to function after almost four years of the so-called war on terrorism.” While, in my right hand, The Wall Street Journal suggested that “retreat from battling the Islamists in the Middle East would only make it easier for them to take the battle to us at home, as they did yesterday in London.”

Nevertheless, it was Tunku Varadarajan, editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal, who nailed the British character for what it is in an apolitical tribute. In the Weekend Journal’s De Gustibus column entitled, “The Sign Says 'Take Courage' and the Brits Do”, Mr. Varadarajan wrote:

It really is considered unseemly to complain, or to feel sorry for oneself, among Britons: This aversion to self-pity is bad for the terrorists, who thrive on attention and the sowing of chaos. They won’t get much satisfaction in Britain. Londoners will not retreat into their shells, and they are unlikely to do as the Spaniards did and draw out the tragedy with a lot of public recrimination, or to capitulate in any way.

The secret of British composure is that Britons really do feel proud of their civilization. On the whole, they apologize for very little, which is as it should be. Their message to terrorists is always likely to be straight and robust: “How dare you! I'm British!”

So I suspect that the sixes and sevens are not going to last for very long and our dear friends across the pond will collectively pick themselves up, dust off their jacket, stick their chest out, put their chin up, and show those damn cowards how civilized people behave. As for me, the next time I am in London, I am going to use the Underground as usual – but to the first gent that I bump into on the tube, I will proffer, “Mr. Livingstone, I presume.”