Tomorrow's Conventional Wisdom -- Today!! (CONCLUSION)

More freshly-minted thoughts – actually, getting a little musty since the election was awhile ago.

[PS:  I've made a strong resolution to post much more frequently in 2011 -- a larger number of shorter observations, interspersed with the longer essays.  I'll be grateful if you'll check in from time to time, even if you don't receive a notification that there's anything new up.  Many thanks.   -- Steve.]

It’s Not the Economy, Other than Secondarily.

I have seen polls where voters said that the economy was their main concern.

I partly believe this. When the pundits talk about the economy, they focus on jobs.

Jobs are important. Real important. If you don’t have one, then jobs are the most important thing.

But most people have jobs. And most people are not extremely fearful that they will lose their jobs. More people than usual, these days, but still a long way from most. I don’t mean to be snotty about this. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose one’s job because of economic conditions. (Heaven forbid one is also incompetent.)

I think that when most people say they are concerned about the economy, I think they mean they are concerned about what our political leaders on the federal, state, and local levels have done and are doing to it, and that it will be extremely difficult to undo. That is, they’re not worried about the current dip – they’ve seen dips followed by booms – they’re worried about the rest of their lives, worried that after years of spending and required future spending by both Republican and Democratic administrations (with the current administration the champeen), the damage will be long-lasting and hard to undo. Deficit spending, spending on nothing, spending on (certain) public employee unions for poor service, corrupt spending, spending to create and enforce niggly regulations, pork spending, earmark spending – and only a little of it actually classifiable as economically productive. So, so much of it is paying bureaucrats to do nothing more than move it around, something markets do so much better and cheaper and with less injury to freedom.

Not my intention to mount a defense of markets versus a command economy, as if they needed one. My point here is that this election was about more than short-term joblessness, to the extent it was about the economy at all. In spite of everything, the public is optimistic. The government has screwed up the economy, by commission (spending) and omission (failure to curb financial sector wrongdoing). They can tell the government to fix it. They just took the first step.

The Peckerwood Factor.

It wasn’t a Republican sweep. There’s not much accounting for California, which continues its descent into economic lunacy. And parts of the Eastern seaboard, they can’t be helped either.

But there were some other losers. Joe Miller in Alaska. Christine O’Donnell in Delaware.

Thereby hangs the danger of the Tea Party. When the population rises, there are lots and lots of slots to fill. Some of the candidates to whom the population turns are going to be peckerwoods, just like some to whom they turned in 2008 were, to put the matter kindly, more liberal than voters cared to see as they swept out the Republicans in that wave of revulsion.

(When I use the term “peckerwood,” I mean a style of conservatism that is reactionary, extremely ideological, and almost aggressively ignorant. Your peckerwoods may vote sensibly, but their manner and rhetoric is, after awhile, offputting and offensive and guaranteed to lose the center that the Republicans need. I do not use it in the 19th and early 20th century sense of poor southern whites.)

And, like the hard libs who slipped through in 2008, some peckerwoods slipped through in 2010.

The Republicans need to keep charge of these types. I don’t have any prescriptions on how that can be accomplished. Not all – I’d say probably only a few – Tea Party-supported candidates are peckerwoods. But they tend to be loud and to draw attention to themselves and paint responsible Republicans with their broad brush.

Beware the peckerwood.

Who Will Lead?

In November many of us got a lot of what we wanted.

Now what?

The Republicans considerably increased the size of their tent in 2010. Who will emerge to lead the party to 2012? Who will step forward to avoid screwing this up?

At this writing, there are no breakaway front runners. An off-the-cuff survey:

Sarah Palin: No. I’m sure I’ll be writing more as time goes by, but let me say it straight out – she is not smart enough. And there’s the odd family life, Bristol making Billy Carter look respectable.  I’m not entirely sure Palin wasn’t born in Kenya. I’m tired of flaky exotics in the White House or near it.

John Boehner: Prematurely orange. I don’t know what to think about his lachrymose tendencies. I know the guy has come up from a hard life, and that’s terrific. But I’ve never heard a public utterance of his that stayed with me. He seemed to think the first two years of the Obama presidency were about lack of transparency. Not impressive.

Michael Steele: Every team needs some really, really good black guys. I’m not sure any team can win these days without excellent black guys. Well, I gotta tell you, the Democrats’ black guy is totally kicking the Republicans’ black guy’s ass. What a mediocrity – I can’t believe the party hasn’t shown him the door. You never see him as a spokesman anymore, and he’s compromised by his profligacy in office. I think the country has really grown up – we’re confident enough in our judgment, independent of race, to kick black guys out of leadership positions in both parties. (I hope.)

Newt Gingrich:  Really smart, really good debater, real knowledgeable, extremely sound on the issues, but hopelessly compromised by his seamy mistreatment of his (former) wife and his condescending manner (former professor, like we need another one of those). He should have Michael Steele’s job. He could be a party leader, just not a national leader.

John McCain: No. His maverick act was always a sham and was exposed in the campaign. And let’s face it, he’s old and seems older than he is.

Bobby Jindal: Not this time. Needs some seasoning before the cameras and some serious sartorial advice. Otherwise, really like the guy.

Tim Pawlenty: The guy gets a lot of attention, but so far I’ve found him pretty Lamar-Alexanderish. Smart but in love with his press clippings.

Rudy Giuliani: A guy who runs as bad a campaign as he ran (or allowed to be run for him) in 2008 has not exhibited a model for national leadership. Having said that, I still like the guy and believe there’s a role for him. But he has to hook up with some professional campaign management that won’t tell him to hide out in Florida for two months while every other candidate is on the news every day.

Mitt Romney: Strong, but he’s going to have to deal with the crisis of Romneycare in Massachusetts.  He should say something like:  "I can't believe how incredibly stupid I was, and I've like absolutely totally learned my lesson, and don't you want a president who learns from his mistakes?"   I don’t think the Mormon thing is a big electoral problem. Is it? Don’t have a feel for it. He needs to get out front on some current issues, though. He’s not going to look good riding Boehner’s coattails. Maybe he’s trying not to peak.

Chris Christie: Look out. A term or two under his impressive belt and he could be a guy. A mountain of common sense.

Michele Bachmann: Never seen her look bad. Like Christie, she could be a great national leader. Need to see more.

Mike Huckabee: A lot to like here. Personable, smart, not crazy-right. I’ve seen it written that his parole decisions could be a problem, but I don’t see it. Right now, my personal favorite. Not without reservations. But he seems like a reasonable man who could more than hold his own with the President in debate, and who could attract . . .

. . . the Cool Hot Center.

Tomorrow's Conventional Wisdom -- Today! (PART 1)

In  my first post on the 2010 election I looked back at some of the reasons given for the shocking collapse of President Obama’s coalition.    It was fun to revisit the past two years of liberal incomprehension and error, but it did not meet my personal requirement that I offer the Cool Hot Centrist Nation something other than warmed over punditry of others.  (I frequently warm over my own punditry.)  Herewith, then, some nuggets of what I’m thinking about the next few years and beyond.  Quite a bit of it consists of priceless instruction to the Republican Party.  Starting with:

Don’t Underestimate Barack Obama.   I’ve received criticism from some readers for noting occasionally that the man has some very admirable qualities.  His policies are so bad that the temptation is strong to judge him as a bad man through and through.     Never mind whether this is ungracious – it’s simply wrong.   Barack Obama is smart (see my series on the nature of his intelligence –  Part 1 -- Part 2).   The Republicans should not take for granted that his ego will not allow him to move to the center, will not allow him to offer compromises to Republicans that they will be unable to decline.  I’m not saying that I expect this to happen; I’m not saying that it is likely to happen; I’m saying it’s wrong to assume that it can’t happen because the President lacks the brains to be flexible about his principles.  In fact, it is my expe  ctation that, at least at first, he will continue to press his academic statist agenda for reasons I have set forth elsewhere.

[Note:  This was composed before his recent compromise on taxes.  See?] 

It is the case that he has squandered a great deal of his personal capital through the exposure of his tendency to dissimulate.  But he still cuts an appealing physical figure.  He speaks very well off the cuff and from the lectern; his reliance on teleprompters has been overstated because his oratorical skills were overpraised in the past.  He has a fine speaking voice – must be the smokes.   I’m not being frivolous here – style points count in American politics.  In politics everywhere, for that matter.  Except maybe China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Minnesota.

The economy is likely to get better, as the economy almost always does.

And if he runs again (80%) and is renominated (less certain) he will be formidable in debate against any Republican candidate who isn’t highly intelligent and thoroughly prepared, or who lacks his glibness.  Excuse me a moment – coughsarahpalincough.

I’m serious.  Don’t forget about the debates.  We (by this, I mean I and people who don’t want Obama to win in 2012) need someone who is Obama’s equal in intelligence, grasp of policy, self-assurance, and for lack of a better phrase savoir faire.  (“Charisma” is overused.)   I’m not sure who fits that bill in the current batch of hopefuls, but I know a couple who don’t.   Beg pardon --hackbobbyjindalwheeze.

Raw Numbers Underestimate the Policy Impact of November 2.   The Republican sweep was compelling everywhere except traditional liberal strongholds – the Northeast, California and a handful of outliers that I’ll consider elsewhere.   It included statehouses and local races. 

But the Republicans did not regain the Senate.   As things stand right now, the Senate is 51 Democrat, 47 Republican, and 2 Independent.  The independents are Joe Lieberman (Connecticut) and Bernie Sanders (Vermont).  Sanders is a socialist – no, that’s not a hyperbolic slam, he really is a socialist.   He caucuses with the Democrats. 

Of the 33 Senators up for re-election in 2012, 20 are Democrats.  And of those 20, not all of them are left-crazy, although they might have gone along with what they mistakenly believed was the bulletproof Obama-endorsed legislative agenda the past two years.  These guys aren’t dumb – they see what happened to apparently firmly- entrenched senators like Russ Feingold.  They see Scott Brown sitting in Edward Kennedy’s seat.  Would you expect them to go down the line with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and President Obama on hot-button conservative issues?   Would you expect them to ignore the message rising from the entrails of the November 2 slaughter?

Personally, I would not.

It is probably too much to hope that the Republicans can assemble a veto-proof majority to do what they need to do to undo the legislative wreckage of the last two years.  But even with a minority in the Senate, the right-moderates stand some chance of maintaining effective control.

Part 2 will appear in a few days.

Do You Remember the Moment? No, Really, When Was It?

There are a lot of folks out there who still strongly support President Obama. There are also folks out there who thought him an irredeemable fraud from the moment of his nomination and before.

This article is not for them.

It’s for those who supported him and welcomed the Democratic hegemony that trailed him into office and now don’t like either one. It’s even for folks like me who didn’t vote for him but thought there was a fairish chance he would govern practically, somewhat like Bill Clinton; or folks (also a little like me) who found his stylish sophistication a welcome change that carried with the possibility for an enhanced American profile in the world. That, combined with bulletproof Democratic legislative majorities, guaranteed at a minimum that the era of extremely disappointing Republican rule was over.

My question for that rather large and growing cohort of Obama/Democrat apostates is – when did you know? What event finally convinced you that Obama and the Democrats (who were unanimously following his lead) had clearly broken faith with their promise and were not going to turn back to the center?

Here’s my example from the latest Bush administration. I’ll bet I share it with a lot of people who voted for G.W. a couple of times but gradually grew disgusted with his spending, his inattention to the military situation in the Middle East, and his failure to communicate clearly his . . . well, just about everything.

If there is one presidential gift that keeps on giving, it’s Supreme Court justice appointments. When Sandra Day O’Conner retired, President Bush’s base saw that rarest of opportunities to replace a mostly-unfriendly and at best unreliable vote with a much more solid jurist, an asset that could pay ideological dividends to the Republican core for years to come. There were many distinguished candidates, some of them women. But what did Bush do? He walked out of his office, spotted White House counsel Harriet Miers, said “you’ll do,” and walked right back in.

Harriet Miers and President Bush

It may not have been quite that casual – he might have run it by Karl Rove – but the decision couldn’t have been given much more care than that. It was a terrible pick. Miers and her views were unknown. She had crafted a successful but careful career as a Texas lawyer. Abortion, one of the most important issues to the base – no idea where she stood. No judicial experience. She was a woman for a “woman’s seat,” apparently her sole recommendation. Tokenism plus cronyism, sheesh. It was George W.’s equivalent to George H.W.’s reneging on his “read my lips – no new taxes” pledge. The Miers nomination pretty much proved to anyone still prepared to give Bush the benefit of the doubt that the man simply did not give a damn – or that if he did, he was giving altogether the wrong kind of damn.  The entire right and much of the Cool Hot Center revolted and Bush was humliated into withdrawing her nomination.  A far superior candidate (Samuel Alito) took her place.

Many pundits have speculated on the cause of President Obama’s breathtaking decline. (I hesitate to call it a “fall” – I’m not at all sure the guy won’t make a comeback, and sooner than anyone might think. He’s been formidable and can be again, especially if the Republicans continue their flirtation with Tea Party peckerwoods like Sarah Palin as serious presidential possibilities.) Amazingly, Obama is lazier than either Bush. But if he rallies, look out.) You hear a lot of chatter about the failure of the massive stimulus to create jobs, but I hold with those who believe the discontent runs much deeper – people feel defrauded generally, and they absolutely disbelieve the promises made for the President’s policies.

Yeah, but when did you know that the awfulness of O/Dems’ first year was only going to intensify? When did you know that they simply had to go?

I have a candidate.

I feel for President Obama just a little. (I mean, it’s really a tiny little feeling, itty bitty thing.) He put his legislative agenda in the hands of two of the least appealing political figures of our time: Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Pelosi is tough but not smart; Reid is – I don’t know, it just seems like the guy needs more sleep or maybe an adjustment to his spectacles prescription.

First Lady Michelle Obama demonstrates appropriate presidential obeisance to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

It was Pelosi who gave us that crystallizing moment on March 9, 2010. Heavens, let’s not take it out of context:

"You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.

"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

There it was, in one sentence, in one phrase. And this was not a casual misstatement or an offhand response to a reporter’s question. This appeared in remarks prepared for delivery to the Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties. Rep. Pelosi is proud of this statement.  She issued a press release and you can still find it on her website.  Now in fairness: If you read the whole statement, you might conclude that her intention here was to say that the blessings of healthcare reform will only be fully appreciated when it is enacted.

But recall that this statement was issued at a time when it had become apparent that legislators themselves in fact did not know what was in the healthcare bill, could not explain its operation, fled from questions about its contents, had to be bribed to vote for it (Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson's shocking abandonment of princple was only a couple of months old) and had not, in fact, even bothered to dip into its 2,409 pages to discover the monstrous new bureacracy that would have charge of a huge chunk of the U.S. economy.    (Source: Republican Congressman Kevin Brady’s staff. If the accuracy of this chart has been challenged, I haven’t been able to find it. Brady has said that this is only a partial chart containing only about a third of the plan’s Medusan entanglements. (Actually, he didn’t use the phrase “Medusan entanglements.” That was, uh, me.))

So when Rep. Pelosi said that we have to pass it to find out what’s in it – you know, “away from the fog of controversy” caused by people asking to know what’s in it – she broadcast O/Dems’ fundamental contempt for the deliberative process. It showed their arrogance and indeed, the arrogance of contemporary liberalism, which is no more attractive or justifiable than the arrogance of the right personified in the bad old days by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove (who have in recent years somewhat repented of that attitude). It was disrespectful. And it was myopic – the O/Dems simply saw things wrong. They misread the results of the election. They misread the interest and attention span of the American public. The congressional Democrats misread the nature of Obama’s appeal (so did Obama). And they misread history and the experience of every country (and state – let’s not forget the failing Romneycare in MA) that has ever nationalized healthcare. And, of course, they didn’t even misread the law they passed – the horrors hidden in its labyrinthine prose (and folks, I know a little something about labyrinthine prose) are still being excavated, because they never read it at all.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) (top); Reptilicus (political affiliation unknown)

That was the moment for me. The contempt, the arrogance, the misunderstanding, the regular-style ignorance, and the intentional ignorance – folks, this is how the entrenched political elite thinks. Some Republicans, too. 

Get out the brooms.  And keep them close at hand for 2012.

Nancy Pelosi, President Obama's deluded handmaiden, has done us the favor of explaining the Tea Party in seventeen words.

Are the Republicans Dancing on Their Own Grave?

Republicans and non-Republicans who consider themselves centrists, many of whom voted Democratic in 2008, are giddy at the exposure of Barack Obama as a poor president and kind of a lame-o guy generally.  

I can't join them.  The giddiness seems premature to me.  I'm still working out why, but this is my site, so I'm going to try to work it out here at my typical overlength.

My concern is that the President's opponents may not invest their recent gains wisely.  They are showing signs of being entirely capable of plowing their unexpected windfall into a dot-com IPO.

I can't put my finger on this; perhaps you can help me out.   It'll help if I ramble some.

I was one of those people who believed that the last general election presented us with a choice between a flashy, amateur fraud (+ punch-line running mate) and a conventional, predictable fraud (+ ditto).  I held my nose and voted for the latter, but the former won.  Flashy is sexy.  Flashy is fun.

But he was still a fraud, a well-spoken mediocrity, and it is no surprise that his inexperience in sustaining a fraud on a national scale has resulted in even many of his star-stunned supporters turning on him.  So the current piling on is, in some ways, great fun to observe. 

OK, we're getting there -- it's the fun that's bothering me.  Here's an example:  A few days ago, I came upon an article on The American Thinker website called "The Smallest President" by Geoffrey P. Hunt.   It was a corker.  Let me quote a few tasty passages:

     "Would someone remind us again why the nation elected this man to be president? A man with no resume, a man with no experience in running anything other than a political campaign, a man who is ignorant of history, economics, and technology? A man who is shallow and lazy? A man who shares neither character nor temperament with the American people in this vast republic? How did this happen?

     "Only a partisan or a fool could deny the irredeemable failure of these ideological handmaidens, the genius of Obama's shrinking presidency.

     "In utter exasperation, the citizens of Arizona finally took matters into their own hands, only to be vilified by Obama and his cohorts, who have neither the will nor the capacity to do anything about it.

     "Those who use the currency of identity politics appeal to the ideals of justice and fair distribution of resources and outcomes. But in reality they prey on those who are underprivileged and dependent, making claims of dispossession against those who have enjoyed success and independence derived from their own sweat, equity, and competence.

     "Identity politics combined with incompetence have exposed the absurdity in the ambitions of big government and made Obama the weakest, most anemic and flaccid president in the modern era."

Yes, this is rhetoric, but it's great rhetoric.  I agree with most of it.  (Although I would argue that it's tough to beat Jimmy Carter for weakness, anemia, and flaccidity.)   It's delicious.  And deeply satisfying to those of us who have mistrusted Barack Obama and his fickle media acolytes since the instant he announced his candidacy.

But recently, pieces like Mr. Hunt's, as schadenfreud-y as they are, have started to bother me.

Gloating over the President's tiny profile isn't going to get us anywhere.    Let me ask you to assume for the moment what no less an observer than Peggy Noonan assumed in her piece a week or so ago and what I somewhat more nervously predicted in a couple of recent posts -- this administration is almost already finished.  It imploded in record time, scarcely a year from inauguration.  (And somehow, the President has even managed to take something that was manifestly neither his nor his administration's fault, the BP Gulf Spill, and turn it into the occasion for a demonstration of how being a community organizer and running a large political campaign doesn't prepare a president for dick squat when it comes to leadership, resolve, or action.)   The administration has plenty of time to right itself, but as I have written here and here, I don't think President Obama gives a Rahm's ass about his electoral legacy, and I don't see him shedding his titanic self-regard to admit that his course is inimical to American freedom, not to mention common sense.  I don't think he's going to take his foot off the gas as he continues to execute his hard left.  And he'll keep going right into Poucha Pond.

Well, that's what I would like to think, anyway.  But when I see the reaction of the center and the right to the President's woes, I wonder.  After I read pieces like Mr. Hunt's -- and there are dozens upon dozens of articles like them these days -- I think: 

Enough already.   Fun is fun, but where is it getting us?

The Republicans seem to have short memories, but I suspect that the electorate will not.  It wasn't very long ago that we were all appalled at the indirection, diffidence and incoherence of the Bush Administration.  President Obama continues to remind us of this, and it's an intelligent strategy.

This is the answer to Mr. Hunt's opening question:   We ended up electing this man to be president because we were so unhappy with the lazy, dithering twit we'd had for eight years that we voted against his party and ended up with a twit who is even lazier and whose dithering makes Bush look positively resolute.

So I'm thinking that it's time for those who oppose the President to stop the piling on.  The runner is down; it's fourth and long for POTUS.   It's time for us to figure out what we're going to do when we get the ball back. 

The question people like Mr. Hunt and the Tea Party people and the disaffected centrists and I need to be asking ourselves is -- whatta we got?  With whom are we going to repopulate Congress and the Oval Office?  What are the values and beliefs we are looking to associate with the political class with whom we hope to replace the Democrats? 

It is not enough, and it is wrong, to say "limited government people" or "family-values people" or "God-fearing people," or "people closest in spirit to the Tea Party movement."  But that's what the opposition is starting to look like.  It is offering us people like Sarah Palin and Rand Paul and pappy Ron, and others who appear to be beholden to the Tea Partiers, and I am here to tell you ladies and gentlemen of good sense and moderate good will, although it may feel good to scratch that anti-government itch right now, if what you put up against Barack Obama and the Democrats has no more going for it than that, by 2012 you will find yourselves in the outer darkness for four more years.

Because upon the electorate's mature reflection, it will prefer the urbane moderate-sounding special-interest huckster to the reactionary peckerwood. 

Or, not to put too fine a point on it:  Voters will prefer someone who sounds smart to someone who sounds dumb.  (George Bush is not a counterexample.  Albert Gore and John Kerry, in addition to not sounding smart themselves, had weird and oddly repellent personalities.  And there are those who would say that Gore did win that election.)

The country leans conservative but it does not lean crazy.  It leans toward the centrality of personal responsibility but it does not lean toward meanness.  It is as nervous about the self-certainty of fundamentalist Christians as it is about that of fundamentalist Muslims.  It does not believe that government is inherently evil.  Candidates who talk as though they do begin very soon to sound deranged. 

Let's take Sarah Palin.  Now I happen to like quite a lot about Sarah Palin and I would probably agree with most of what she has to say.  But look deep into your souls and your brains, Tea Party people, and tell me -- do you want to see Sarah Palin debate Barack Obama?  Do you want the country to see her say, in such a debate, what she recently said to Bill O'Reilly -- that our "founding documents" are "quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the 10 commandments, it’s pretty simple."  

And the Bible would say what, exactly, about credit default swaps?  British Petroleum?  the border with Mexico?  the space program?  Affirmative action?   Wealth transfer from the rich to the poor?  Well?

And yet we see Ms. Palin with very respectable poll numbers among Republicans.  And I can't help but think the reason is that it feels so, so good to stick it to the smarmy, elitist, arrogant, fact-evading, redistributionist Democrats by supporting someone way the hell the other side of the spectrum, saying to the odious Pelosis and Reids you're so wrong that we're going to support someone who is against everything you're for just because you're for it. 

That's uh  .  .  .  reactionary.

It's not my intention to demonize Ms. Palin, or Christians.  I voted for her presidential ticket and might find it necessary to do so again.  But that ticket lost.  It lost to one that sounded one helluva lot smarter, and with Joe Biden on that ticket that's not saying much for the ticket I voted for.   When the time comes to sweep Washington clear of its current ideological rubble, we should be looking for women and men who are for something, who are willing to acknowledge that government has a role to play in making our lives better, that the free market isn't good at stopping ecological disasters, that intelligent immigration policy is good for the economy -- you see where I'm going. 

Formulating a coherent, forward-looking set of policies isn't as much fun as bashing Barack Obama.  And I'm all for continuing to document his errors and infirmities.  But in the meantime, we need to resist the tendency to answer the demagoguery of the godless left with demagoguery of the Christian right.

We need to be positive, and we need to be smart.  And we need to sound like both.

I feel a little better, thanks.

No Woman Who Thinks This Is a Good Look for Her Should Be Questioning Sarah Palin's Judgment

Tina Fey may be the world's only beautiful woman who needs a makeover.