The career of Steve Jobs exemplifies the American dream.

It is jarring that death strikes Jobs at a point so young – at 56, he barely had half the professional years of Edison, Ford, and Carnegie, who all died in their eighties. It means the world will miss out on the latter days of career, whether he would’ve stretched out for more incredible goals, or turned to more philanthropic pursuits. In his time, he touched so many areas of cultural life, not just through consumer products, his effect on communication and education, but also the creation of some of the best films of the past decade. So much work in such a compressed period of time. In the beginning, he seemed so young.  And at the end, he seemed old beyond his years.

Jobs was and will remain a cult-like figure, the confrontational counterculturalist, the turtlenecked Buddhist who lived in empty mansions. His products bore his imprint in incredible ways – the original iPods had volume and gain problems almost entirely due to Jobs’ personal hearing loss – and his ruthless expectation for perfection in design is evident – that things should not just look beautiful, but work beautifully. This came at a premium, of course, but it also planted the flag for others to follow and broaden the impact. Sometimes you need a $500 iPad before you have a $200 Kindle Fire.

The Apple fanbase, in recent years, insulated Jobs from the kind of criticism targeted at other prominent CEOs. The genius was all his, the failures the fault of an insufficient apostle. There was major blowback online when the New York Times reported recently that there was no public record of Jobs ever donating to charity.  In this, he was consistent with other progressives (charitable tracking statistics illustrate that those who favor government-mandated income redistribution are statistically far less giving with their own funds, and vice versa). But who knows if that would have changed in time. Carnegie’s dictum is that you spend the first third of your life learning, the second earning, the third giving what you’ve earned away. Jobs, of course, only got the first two.

Yet what Jobs gave the world was something far more fascinating and eye-opening than another museum wing. He was the rare inventor who did not lose sight of the ultimate marketplace for invention – remaining profoundly and tangibly consumer-focused. There have been few leaders of industry throughout the Twentieth Century who had comparable impact on this scale. Most didn’t have a pedigree that said they could change the world. They were tinkerers, dreamers, and visionaries. The risks they took didn’t all pay off. But oh, when they did…

Before the announcement came down yesterday, I’d planned to write something critical about this Peter Thiel essay, and Neal Stephenson’s too, both of whom write about what they view as an untimely end to American technological innovation. They raise some good points. But their pessimism just doesn’t ring true to me. And in Jobs’ death, I think I understand why.

Here’s the thing. The really brilliant ones – the ones who truly advance culture and technology and communication – change the things they touch in such a way that the barriers they break are thoroughly demolished. Afterwards, disenchantment sets in. These barriers are broken, yes, but what next? And time and again, the dust left behind becomes fertile soil for the ingenuity of our children and theirs.

The essence of American optimism is founded in a belief that the world we pass on can exceed the one we inherited. We are not prisoners of an all-encompassing destiny, and neither are our children. This is not a uniquely American inclination, mind you, but a human one – but not all cultures acknowledge or honor it. It was here in America where such an experience was uniquely understood from our inception in our creed. We create, as we were created, and know all who are created have worth. So they have an equal claim to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit. And the fruits of this pursuit are passed on via free enterprise to the new generation, who see in this device or invention not a crowning achievement or barrier buster or an endpoint, but the seed for new ideas, the foundation for new creations, the starting point for a boundless flood of imagination.

We break walls so they can step through. We take them so far, and they take themselves farther. We pass on principles gained, and they apply them. The old begets the new.

So Ray, the milkshake-mixer salesman, the son of Czech immigrants who lied about his age to fight in the First World War, invents fast food. And Bob, third son of a midwestern Congregational reverend, who built an airplane in the garage when he was 12, invents the microchip. And Steve, an Arab-American kid born out of wedlock, adopted son of a machinist and an accountant, drops out of college, starts a company in his garage, and invents something that puts the whole world in the palm of your hand.

It’s happened before. It will happen again. Until it does: Go west, old man, and grow young with the country.

One of the questions regarding the latest polling on the Republican race has to be the status of Mitt Romney and Rick Perry as regional candidates – whether each can compete feasibly outside of their traditional geography.

Here’s the latest data on that point from the Washington Post poll this week. First with Palin, then without.

Essentially, Romney and Perry’s numbers in the South are unchanged with or without Palin: 20/21 percent for Romney, 40/41 percent for Perry. The net non-South figures are slightly more liquid: 24/27 for Romney, 19/21 for Perry. But it’s the West where larger shift happens: 28/34 for Romney, a six point jump, and 23/26 for Perry.

My curiosity here is what Perry’s identification is like in the West, as it seems he has plenty of opportunities to appeal to that contingent. More interesting is the fact that Romney wins only one category among the ideological identifiers: his margin among self-identified Moderate/Liberal Republicans is 29% to Perry’s 12%, while Perry’s alignment is 37% to Romney’s 20% among self-identified Conservatives.

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The Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Tuesday was one of a number of recent polls which show President Obama at record lows in terms of support and approval. (As Elizabeth Blackney pointed out on our podcast, the Tuesday polls were all the more troublesome for the White House given that they surveyed not likely voters, but registered voters or simply adults.) But there was one question in particular where the Washington Post poll stood out from the rest, at least for me, in terms of interest: an indication that only 17% of those surveyed thought President Obama’s economic policies were making the economy better. It’s the third question here.

Thanks to the kindness of The Fix’s Aaron Blake, who is the man, here’s some additional background on what that 17% represents in terms of a breakdown based on age, race, income, and party affiliation. In each case, for clarity’s sake I’ve removed the small percentage of didn’t know/declined to answer.

First, by age: only 22% of 18-29 year olds say Obama’s policies are improving the economy, but that’s his highest portion. He does the worst among 30-39 year olds, who are at 11%. For 40-49 it’s 21%, 50-64 it’s 18%, and 65+ it’s 14%.

Second, by race: as we’ve seen in the past when it comes to Obama’s policies, the perception is different – but perhaps not to the factor that you might expect. 36% of non-white respondents have a positive view of the president’s economic policy, while 11% of whites have that view.  62% of non-whites say Obama’s policies have made the economy worse or had no effect, and 87% of whites share that view.

Third, by income: across all incomes, the mood is dire. The positive viewpoint on Obama’s economy fluctuates only slightly, between 19% for under $50k earners, down to 12%, and back up to 19% for 100k+. However you define the middle class, it’s clear Obama has enormous dissatisfaction with his policies across all income levels.

Finally, by party affiliation. The real trouble here is not the Independents in my view, 86% of whom say Obama’s policies have made things worse or had no effect. The trouble is with Democrats, of whom 12% say Obama has made it worse, but a majority, 52%, say his policies have had no effect. That’s a total of 64% of Democrats who hold the worse/no effect view. That’s simply stunning to me, and it indicates that even if they are unwilling to part with the President when it comes to a pollster’s question, it’s a sign that they’re not willing to pretend they see good things happening in the economy either.
And that brings us to a final point: Obama’s 2008 run was one of the most exciting experiences for political supporters at the national level in American history. His passionate fanbase was engaged, active, and innovative. And looking back, it’s become clear that this passion helped disguise some of the Obama campaign’s failings in both the primary and the general. There was so much fire among his active supporters that many missteps had a much milder effect. If not just a plurality but the majority of President Obama’s partisan base now thinks that three years of his policies have had no effect on the problem, there is going to be a serious gap in energy within the Obama campaign operation, one that will be very difficult to replace.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Elizabeth Blackney and Benjamin Domenech walk through the latest poll numbers for Barack Obama. Hint: They’re really, really bad.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

NBC/WSJ Poll (PDF)
WaPo/ABC News Poll
The Atlantic: The Freelance Revolution
Hoffa: “Let’s take the sons of bitches out.”

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Francis Cianfrocca and Ben Domenech talk about the Eurozone in crisis and why computer makers want to get out of the computer making business and into the software/services business.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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HP Plans to Spin Off PC Business
The European Crisis Deepens
France Eases Short Selling Ban

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Francis Cianfrocca and Ben Domenech talk about Rick Perry’s comments on the Fed, and Florida’s Adam Hasner talks about his run for the Senate.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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Perry Doubles Down on Fed: Open Up and Be Transparent
GOP Field Launches Sharp Attacks on the Fed
Florida Senate Race Heats Up Early
Adam Hasner Speaks at Redstate

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Hillsdale professor and author Burt Folsom joins Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry to discuss his book, New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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Buy the Book: New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America
Professor Burt Folsom
Mackinac Institute
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The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza has a long, meandering piece on Michele Bachmann out today, making her out to be the fringiest of the fringe figures on the fringe–not so much on politics (this goes without saying), but in terms of religion.

In the course of this survey of influences on Bachmann’s faith–much of which relies on little more than book recommendations and offhand approving comments by the Minnesotan as a justification for listings of the worst things Lizza can find on Google about each individual–Lizza cherrypicks quotes and relies overwhelmingly on out of context arguments to attack several figures familiar to many in evangelical communities. Offering precious little new insight into the candidate or her politics, it’s readily evident the piece really isn’t about Bachmann at all. Lizza’s goal is obvious: it isn’t enough to depict these evangelical Christians as wrong about things–the media has been doing that for years, with little impact. For Lizza to write that these individuals are stupid or intolerant or anti-science isn’t anything new. So they have to be depicted as dangerous, too.

It’d be a waste of time to try and correct Lizza on these points (any more than it was to correct the New Yorker on their bizarre Da Vinci Code-like writings about the Koch brothers) or argue with him on the sheer level of ignorance within the piece. So let’s just look at one: a specific and clearly incorrect point that Lizza writes about Francis Schaeffer.

In an extensive portion of the piece, Lizza writes about Schaeffer and his L’Abri program (the only connection to Bachmann that Lizza notes is that she and her husband watched Schaeffer’s film series). My eyebrow rose when I read this line:

In 1981, three years before he died, Schaeffer published “A Christian Manifesto,” a guide for Christian activism, in which he argues for the violent overthrow of the government if Roe v. Wade isn’t reversed.

I personally don’t share many of Schaeffer’s views, or the views of the other figures Lizza writes about. But having read the Manifesto and extensive essays about it in the context of helping write a book on the decline of mainline Christianity and the rise of evangelicals, I find this depiction of Schaeffer’s position is just a vicious smear.

What Schaeffer called for were acts of civil disobedience if Roe v. Wade was not overturned. He repeatedly and specifically stressed that violence was not justified – “overreaction can too easily become the ugly horror of sheer violence”, he wrote. His four responses to Roe, as outlined in the Manifesto, were 1. supporting a human life amendment to the Constitution, 2. seeking the overturn of Roe and Doe in the courts, 3. bringing legal pressure to bear on abortion clinics and conducting peaceful protests, and 4. offering Christian alternatives, such as crisis pregnancy clinics, to urge women toward adoption or keeping the child instead. These responses may seem out of bounds to someone writing for The New Yorker, but they have been the responses of the pro-life cause–one which now represents the views of a plurality of Americans according to Gallup–for decades.

Schaeffer outlines his views explicitly in these remarks in 1982, based on the Manifesto–with a call for civil disobedience, based on the actions of the early Christian church:

Now, I come toward the close, and that is that we must recognize something from the Scriptures, and that’s why I had that Scripture read that I had read tonight. When the government negates the law of God, it abrogates its authority. God has given certain offices to restrain chaos in this fallen world, but it does not mean that these offices are autonomous, and when a government commands that which is contrary to the Law of God, it abrogates its authority.

Throughout the whole history of the Christian Church, (and again I wish people knew their history. In A Christian Manifesto I stress what happened in the Reformation in reference to all this) at a certain point, it is not only the privilege but it is the duty of the Christian to disobey the government. Now that’s what the founding fathers did when they founded this country. That’s what the early Church did. That’s what Peter said. You heard it from the Scripture: “Should we obey man?… rather than God?” That’s what the early Christians did.

Occasionally — no, often, people say to me, “But the early Church didn’t practice civil disobedience.” Didn’t they? You don’t know your history again. When those Christians that we all talk about so much allowed themselves to be thrown into the arena, when they did that, from their view it was a religious thing. They would not worship anything except the living God. But you must recognize from the side of the Roman state, there was nothing religious about it at all — it was purely civil. The Roman Empire had disintegrated until the only unity it had was its worship of Caesar. You could be an atheist; you could worship the Zoroastrian religion… You could do anything. They didn’t care. It was a civil matter, and when those Christians stood up there and refused to worship Caesar, from the side of the state, they were rebels. They were in civil disobedience and they were thrown to the beasts. They were involved in civil disobedience, as much as your brothers and sisters in the Soviet Union are. When the Soviet Union says that, by law, they cannot tell their children, even in their home about Jesus Christ, they must disobey and they get sent off to the mental ward or to Siberia. It’s exactly the same kind of civil disobedience that’s represented in a very real way by the thing I am wearing on my lapel tonight. [Ed. - Earlier in his remarks, Schaeffer references the Solidarity pin he's wearing - L'Abri students had sent an eight ton truck of food and supplies to Poland's resistance.]

Every appropriate legal and political governmental means must be used. “The final bottom line”– I have invented this term in A Christian Manifesto. I hope the Christians across this country and across the world will really understand what the Bible truly teaches: The final bottom line! The early Christians, every one of the reformers (and again, I’ll say in A Christian Manifesto I go through country after country and show that there was not a single place with the possible exception of England, where the Reformation was successful, where there wasn’t civil disobedience and disobedience to the state), the people of the Reformation, the founding fathers of this country, faced and acted in the realization that if there is no place for disobeying the government, that government has been put in the place of the living God. In such a case, the government has been made a false god. If there is no place for disobeying a human government, what government has been made GOD.

Caesar, under some name, thinking of the early Church, has been put upon the final throne. The Bible’s answer is NO! Caesar is not to be put in the place of God and we as Christians, in the name of the Lordship of Christ, and all of life, must so think and act on the appropriate level. It should always be on the appropriate level. We have lots of room to move yet with our court cases, with the people we elect — all the things that we can do in this country. If, unhappily, we come to that place, the appropriate level must also include a disobedience to the state.

Schaeffer’s position takes far more from MLK’s letter from a Birmingham jail (“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”) than it does from any crazed individual bent on violent overthrow of the government. Is there really no distinction between the support of civil disobedience, legal political action, and non-violent protest–the elements of nearly every social justice movement in the history of the world–with “the violent overthrow of the government”, in Lizza’s words? Or does that distinction only vanish when the movement in question is aimed at abortion, as opposed to some other cause?

One final note: given that Lizza quotes Frank Schaeffer in the piece–who has spent much of his life urinating on his father’s grave–and who has made this false claim before, it’s possible he’s just repeating it without having read the work in question. But I’m sure Lizza wouldn’t do something so unprofessional before writing something this provocative.

Gallup reports that President Obama’s weekly job approval rating has tied his lowest rating ever: “President Barack Obama averaged a 43% job approval rating for the week of July 18-24, tied for the lowest weekly average of his administration.”

They note that this rating puts him solidly below the ratings of Bill Clinton at the time of his government shutdown confrontation with Newt Gingrich, and his stagnation makes it look as if July will result in his lowest average rating for a single month yet. But there’s another precedent they don’t mention that should be far more troublesome to the president and his campaign staff.

Since FDR, ten incumbent presidents have run for re-election. Three were not re-elected – Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush.

Looking at poll tracking data for all ten, and you find that most engaged in a significant trend-line in the leadup to the election – downward or upward – almost entirely tied to economic performance. H.W. Bush came off the popular post-Gulf War highs into a spiral as the economy stagnated. Reagan steadily elevated his rating from a mediocre 47% in the fall of 1983 to a robust 62% by election time, mostly by virtue of an economy soaring out of recession.

The question is, has any modern incumbent president running for re-election had a lower approval rating at the same point, roughly 16 months before the election, as Obama’s 43%?

The answer is: just one.

In recent weeks the radical left has attacked House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) for his purchase of an expensive bottle of wine at a hotel restaurant in Washington, DC. The incident reveals much about the nation’s current political conflict over entitlement policy—but not for the reasons the left might wish.

Ryan was accosted at his table by a liberal academic for his purchase, while eating dinner with a pair of friendly economists. The story died out when it became apparent there was no ethical wrongdoing on Ryan’s part—he paid for the bottle despite drinking only a glass, mindful of the stringent regulations against gifts.

Frustrated at finding no regulation broken, the left attempted to use Ryan’s wine selection to suggest hypocrisy, considering his calls for entitlement reform. Far-left author Timothy Egan, an opinion writer for The New York Times, hyperventilated over it, claiming the incident was “instructive as a picture of power,” an illustration of how “Republicans’ corporate overlords … jerk their chain” to maintain “the policies of economic inequality.”

Egan’s criticism of Ryan for daring to enjoy a good glass of wine while calling for the means-testing of Medicare and raising the retirement age ignores, of course, the fact that President Barack Obama himself has publicly endorsed such solutions. But that is different, somehow.

It’s all too easy for Egan to get away with this ignorant blather, for much of the press agree with such class-warfare rhetoric. Egan, like so many others on the left today, apparently does not understand the vast difference between employment and entitlement. He implicitly rejects Calvin Coolidge’s reminder, so relevant to today’s political debates: “Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”

There’s a simple truth about how we respond to the success of others. Some people covet what others have, and seek to destroy them or steal it away by force of law. Others decide to work hard and earn it for themselves.

The opportunity to choose the latter is the wonderful thing about America: The barriers of class are nothing compared to the will and capability of human endeavor. With commitment, hard work, and long hours, you can achieve a better life not just for yourself, but for your family. A kid who had nothing, who was abandoned by his father, can, with the help of a mother and grandparents who loved him, become a college graduate, a bestselling author, a millionaire, and now our president.

My grandfather was one of ten children, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1923. He had no royal blood, no riches. Yet today he is buried in Arlington Cemetery among the heroes, awarded in death for what he earned in life in thirty years of service to the nation.

That’s what the current budget debate is all about: whether our children will have the same opportunities, the same chance to make something of themselves, to pursue the life they want and pass it on.

Most Americans still prefer to work, to strive, to make something of themselves—not to fall into the maw of welfare and food stamps. They know the difference between equality under law and enforced equality of outcome. They innately understand the value of earned success over entitlement. They fundamentally accept Margaret Thatcher’s point that the essence of government is to ensure everyone has the “right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, and to have the State as servant, not as master.”

Most Americans want employment, not entitlement, and when a politician drinks wine in a DC restaurant, advocatory journalists’ disingenuous appeals to envy deserve nothing but contempt. For generations, Americans have understood that the sensible response to other’s wealth is not to covet it and demand government take from them and give to us. It’s to look at what they have and set one’s mind to the pursuit of it, to hard work and effort. It’s to say: “They earned that life. And so will I. Because I am an American. And I can.”

Benjamin Domenech (bdomenech@heartland.org) is a research fellow at The Heartland Institute and editor of ReformMedicaid.org, a Web site dedicated to innovative entitlement reform.