John LeBoutillier with Charles McCord, who is retiring after
40 years as Don Imus’ sidekick.

Watch/listen to John LeBoutillier tomorrow, Wednesday, May 4th, at 6:35 AM on “Imus in the Morning.”

www.imus.com

In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, self-elected political experts are rushing to proclaim, “President Obama is now guaranteed to win again in 2012!”

A word of caution: not so fast.

In 1945, less than six months after he led Great Britain out of the darkest days in her history to defeat Nazi Germany, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was himself defeated at the polls.

More recently, in 1991 President George H.W. Bush defeated Sadaam Hussein’s forces in Kuwait and drove them back into Iraq. By May of 1991 President Bush had a record-high 91% approval rating. Yet 18 months later, Mr. Bush received a mere 37% of the vote in losing to Bill Clinton (and Ross Perot).

So anyone who thinks this wonderful, long-awaited killing of Osama bin Laden guarantees President Obama’s re-election 18 months from now is just plain mistaken and short-sighted.

However, here is a simple, two-point plan that would almost guarantee Obama’s re-election:

1) Use this long-awaited killing of Osama bin Laden as the point of demarcation for the U.S. to end its occupation of Afghanistan. The President could announce, in effect, “We have succeeded in our first mission–to capture or kill Osama bin Laden–and we will leave behind a skeleton force to guarantee our second mission–that Afghanistan will not become the launching pad for more attacks on the United States.”

The President could then order a drawdown of 90,000 troops and leave 5,000-10,000 either in Afghanistan or in the theater to monitor future terrorist activities in Afghanistan.

As for the effect of this withdrawal on the future of Pakistan, their obvious complicity in hiding Bin Laden disqualifies them as an American ally worthy of our help and protection.

In other words, to Hell with them.

2) Obama’s other action which would virtually guarantee his re-election is to make The Grand Bargain–the deal with the Republicans and Tea party Congressmen to cut the National Debt and deficits by changing Pentagon, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending in a fundamental way.

If he did this, the financial markets would rejoice and foreign investors would flock to the US. The reaction would be positive–that the US has finally addressed its long-term budget problems.

Declaring victory in Afghanistan and withdrawing most of our forces and seriously implementing a debt reduction program would leave the GOP almost nowhere to run in 2012. The key voting bloc–independents–would go for Obama in a big, big way.

Only one caveat: if the economy goes back in the tank, then Obama would still have trouble in 2012. Barring that, he’d be heavily favored.

Let’s hope he doesn’t read this column.

There is genuine despair on the Right.

More and more Republicans and conservatives see President Obama’s re-election as a disaster for future of the United States—yet feel powerless to stop it unless we find a special candidate to unite the shattered Right/GOP/Tea Party Movement, win over independents and then defeat Mr. Obama.

That “special” candidate needs a unique combination of skills and temperament not seen since the days of Ronald Reagan: a strong vision of where the country ought to go combined with a personality that can sell that vision to more than 50% of the voters–plus a thick skin to be able to weather the inevitable onslaught from the virulently pro-Obama leftist so-called-Mainstream-Media which has everything they have ever believed in riding on Obama’s re-election. In their minds, Obama’s ascension to the Oval Office was an affirmation of their dreams–and his re-election will solidify and affirm that dream; his defeat shatters and rejects all they have believed in. Thus, they will do virtually anything to win the 2012 election. Losing the Senate–while a huge problem for the Left—is even acceptable to them; losing the Obama Presidency is not.

First, this Special Candidate has to have the Five Tools of Politics:

1. Fire-in-the-belly. This over-riding hunger borders on the obsessive. Virtually all successful political candidates, no matter how well they disguise it, would “walk over their mothers” to win, as Nixon White House aide Charles Colson once put it.

2. Self-discipline. The ability to rein in one's own worst instincts, habits and weaknesses.

3. Authoritative presence. Especially in the television era, candidates must project an air of gravitas and weight.

4. Raise money. All successful candidates find a way to raise enough money to win. Some, like JFK, merely asked their father to pay. Others spend years developing a network of donors; others cultivate special interests. However they do it, winning candidates always come up with “the mother's milk of politics.” Team Obama will raise $1 Billion. The Republican is going to have a tough time matching that.

5. Communicate a positive vision. Derided by President George H.W. Bush as “that vision thing,” it is this singular ability that elevated Presidents Kennedy, Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt into the political Hall of Fame. The skill to speak in a way that inspires voters is invaluable-and very rare.

For the 2012 race, the only conservative/Republican/Tea Partier who can defeat the Obama Machine will have to have all five tools–plus he will have to connect with the American people like no other candidate since Reagan.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen says that “the odds are the GOP candidate next year will not come from the current group of Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty, Palin, Trump; it will be someone we are not yet talking about or focusing on.”

He is right: if we are to defeat Obama in 2012, we need to find that Special Candidate. And, so far, he has not appeared on the political scene.

Let’s hope he does–no later than this fall.

See John LeBoutillier—twice-on FOX Business Channel:

1.) At 11-11:30 AM, on Dagen McDowell/Connell McShane‘s show on Tuesday, April 12, 2011;
2.) On Lou Dobbs Tonight at 7 PM, on Wednesday, April 13th.

ENJOY!!!

Now that the preliminary fights—last week’s relatively-trivial struggle over a mere $38 billion in cuts—are over, we are about to proceed to the most epic and important national debate of our lifetime.

This is the imminent vote in Congress to raise the national debt ceiling. Without an affirmative vote by Congress and subsequent presidential signing, the federal government will no longer be able to borrow money by issuing debt (selling U.S. Treasury bills) and will then soon be incapable of paying its bills, including interest payments to US bond-holders.

In effect, we will “go bust.”

Or, the United States of America—the greatest nation ever created—will have squandered all we have been given and spent ourselves into Third World status.

But there is indeed another option: we can use this upcoming debt ceiling vote to force the radical spending and tax changes that are necessary to set us back on a sane course.

Specifically, this means we must:

• Fix the negative long-term downward trend of Social Security;

• The same applies to Medicare;

• Medicaid is rife with rip-offs from nursing homes and doctors; this has to be totally overhauled;

• Pentagon spending, which gets a free pass from too many on the Right, needs an overhaul in its spending and contracting processes;

• The tax code needs a major revamp—to make it fairer and to capture more revenue;

All of these are major, wrenching, difficult, politically suicidal steps – and they will all have to be addressed simultaneously in order to garner the necessary votes to raise the debt ceiling.

As of now, the votes are not available to pass an increase in the debt ceiling. The 87 Tea Party freshmen in the House have told Speaker Boehner they will not vote to increase the debt ceiling.

The White House and the Treasury Department are secretly in a state of near-panic over the possibility that the debt ceiling will not be raised.

Thus we have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to save this country.

And the Hand of God is involved: the Tea Party Movement, which arose over the debt, is now positioned in Congress to leverage this debt ceiling vote into a long-term plan to pay down the national debt.

In other words, the Tea Party Movement is going to force the two parties and the political Establishment inside the DC Beltway to undo decades of irresponsible federal spending.

The rhetoric will be epic. The anger real. The fear palpable. The demonizing of the Tea Partiers will be savage.

But, here is my prediction: by early summer, Obama and the Left and Boehner, McConnell and the Right will make the Grand Bargain: major changes in all of the above, embraced by both sides, and forced by the courage of outsiders from the Tea Party who brought fiscal sanity to the process.

America will once again admit its problems—and fix them. Thank God.

Donald Trump’s emergence as a possible 2012 GOP presidential candidate has to be compared to the last billionaire—Ross Perot—who burst onto the political scene in February 1992 on CNN’s Larry King Live and completely altered that race and, in effect, elected Bill Clinton over President George H. W. Bush.

There are a few similarities between Perot and Trump but many differences, too:

• As billionaires they are seen by the public as too rich to be corrupted by our dirty political culture;

• In a time of national economic distress, billionaires are seen as guys who know how to make money when none of us can; they know how to do all the things we cannot do—in sum, many people think billionaires are smarter than anyone else; this is ironic as most people think billionaires don’t pay their fare share of taxes—yet they still want the billionaire to be the savior;

• Ross Perot and Donald Trump do share several characteristics that come from being rich: they are both their own bosses and thus the normal political and media rules do not apply to them;

• They have enormous egos;

• They don’t listen to people very well;

• They can get on any show any time they want—something only a sitting president can do;

• Now, how are Perot and Trump different?

• Perot is a Naval Academy graduate and thus was always a straight-laced square person who wanted to focus his campaign not on himself but more on the debt status of the federal government.

• Perot’s true—and heretofore-unknown—reason for running in 1992 was to ruin George H.W. Bush’s chance of being re-elected as payback for Bush’s criminal behavior in covering-up the truth about the POWs left behind—alive—in Vietnam when the war ended. Bush was head of the CIA in 1976—and has been dirty on the issue ever since. Perot was out to “get” him for this perfidy—and he did.

• But that was all about a serious public policy issue—not about the personal aggrandizement of himself;

• Donald Trump is all about himself—period!

• Everything he touches has to have his name splashed all across it. (Will it become The Trump White House if he wins?)

• Trump’s business and personal behavior over the years is not on the same level as Perot’s pioneering career in computers. Gambling casinos and three marriages are not going to fit with the still-powerful Religious Right—even if much of what (now) says on China and OPEC and Obama strikes a responsive chord.

Conclusion: While our country is floundering in a weak economy, the allure of the billionaire savior can be intoxicating.

But American does not need a savior! We are America’s saviors!!!

Do not fall for the (momentary) allure of the easy fix—the idea that one rich man knows better than we do.

No, as we see with the Tea Party Movement, we, the American people, are pushing, clawing, scratching and fighting to change our country’s economic future. We are saving the country!

We just need to keep on pushing—and, like the Founding Fathers—God’s grace will shine on us.