This would explain much:
…after I taped my PJTV interview yesterday with David Kirkham — whose Utah Tea Party toppled Bob Bennett and brought a new Speaker into the Utah State House to boot — and Mike Wilson, whose Cincinnati Tea Party helped paint Ohio red last week, they stayed on the hookup and were talking about how the biggest surprise to both of them, each a political neophyte, was how comparatively easy politics was compared to running a business.
So it attracts mediocrities (if that’s not too kind a word) like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. And Barack Obama. They’re not competent at anything else. Not that they’re particularly competent at that, either.
[Update a couple minutes later]
They’re arrogant people, with much to be modest about.
[Update a while later]
The real Democrat messaging problem: they can’t get people to ignore reality:
This was the progressive agenda in full, with accomplishments and ideas most politicians could only dream of, and yet what happened in this election? The Democrats faced a historic loss with the public turning hugely against them. And why? It really comes down to a messaging problem. Liberals just couldn’t get their voices heard over the noise from their one foe that is always trying to tear down all their plans and belittle every accomplishment: reality.
The reality noise machine — with its job losses, terrorist attacks, and budgets — is always trying to shout down liberals’ ideas with its fear-mongering of actual problems that need to be addressed and a physical reality that needs to be appeased. When liberals create or save millions of jobs with a trillion dollar stimulus, there goes reality saying we’re spending money we don’t have and unemployment is only going up. When a progressive plan is proposed to get everyone free health care, there’s reality with its message of gloom that nothing is free and our health care will only get worse. And if we ever try to appease some nation like Iran through peaceful, diplomatic means, reality is always pointing out how close they are to nuclear weapons. Reality is obnoxious, and these days it’s everywhere, and people are actually listening to it over liberals.
For instance, look at the whole “death panel” debate from a while back. Despite numerous liberal journalists and commentators assuring people that death panels were not mentioned in the health care bill and that it was completely made up, people decided to instead listen to the reality of bureaucracy and limited supply over the intelligent people telling them to ignore that. And when New York Times columnist Paul Krugman constantly argues that we need to spend even more to get out of this economic situation, do people listen to the Nobel Prize-winning economist or reality? These days it’s reality, and people are going to keep choosing reality over their own interests unless liberals learn to fight back with better messaging.
Stupid realists. Who are they going to believe — the “reality-based community” or reality? Come on, people.
Its is much too early for these men to try to answer this question. Reynolds should ask it again in two years.
Of course, many of the things that make running a business so difficult is dealing with the hoops and hurdles imposed by the political class. Most of “work” really isn’t that hard once you have the training, it’s the regulations and threat of lawsuits that keep you up at night.
I’m not self-employed, but I think about my sister-in-law who is an architect. Due to years of experience she can draft up blueprints and the like pretty quickly. It’s easy for her. But dealing with local permits, fire inspectors and construction union officials never gets easy and easily takes up the majority of her time.
I think the essential difference is that in business you must persuade people all the time, and usually they are people with more power than you over your livelihood, either because (1) they can fire you directly, if they are your boss or the board, or (2) they can screw up implementation and destroy the business, if they are working for you, or at the least (3) they can force you out of business, if they’re consumers who won’t buy what you’re selling.
In government you need only negotiate with your peers — other Senators, the President, other Congressmen — other aristocrats, essentially — and you can usually do some kind of you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours deal, where you both agree to profit at the peasants’ expense. And when it comes to the great consumers of your “product” (us), you don’t need to persuade at all, since what you put in place gets forced on them.
Of course, in principle every election you can be held responsible, but in practice it’s a pretty weak effect. Only rarely do people blame their particular Congressman for things Congress in general does, and even then the worse that happens is you retire early. It’s not like business where if you fail your life’s savings goes up in smoke, your mistress dumps you when the money runs out, you start to drink in despair, then your wife leaves you in disgust, and finally you bash your pick-up into a tree while backing over your own dog.
I had lunch last Saturday with the top eye surgeon in my area. When the topic of ObamaCare came up, he told me of a presentation he attended. According to the presentation, when ObamaCare gets fully underway, he’ll basically have to report the diagnosis for each patient to the government. The government will then authorize him to do one of 3 different treatments. If, based on his decades of medical experience he determines that some other treatment is best for his patient and he actually performs that treatment against the government’s dictates, he is liable for a $100,000 fine the first time and a possible jail sentence the second time. So, while the legislation doesn’t actually call them “death panels”, you’ll have government bureaucrats dictating what treatment (if any) patients are allowed to receive and when they can get it. So despite the fact that the phrase “death panels” doesn’t appear in the legislation, a garbage dump by any other name would stink just as bad.
Remember how liberals sometimes refer to themselves as “the reality based community.” They really have a poor understanding of how the world actually works as opposed to their fantasy of how they’d like it to work in la-la land.
It’s not like business where if you fail your life’s savings goes up in smoke, your mistress dumps you when the money runs out, you start to drink in despair, then your wife leaves you in disgust, and finally you bash your pick-up into a tree while backing over your own dog.
Carl, nobody write like you. We’ll pay for the blog… this isn’t autobio. is it?
Carl, you’re supposed to play the music backwards.
And as far as businesses go, a number of people manage to fail more than one business. So it’s not quite as bad as Carl said. Still in most cases, a politician who gets high office, gets a good salary and pension even if they’re only in for a few years. It’s has all the risk of an Easter egg hunt.
I repeat, they are public servants… why do they get any pension at all?
Rand, if you ever want a co-blogger to cover for you when you are stretched thin, pick Carl.
“It’s not like business where if you fail your life’s savings goes up in smoke, your mistress dumps you when the money runs out, you start to drink in despair, then your wife leaves you in disgust, and finally you bash your pick-up into a tree while backing over your own dog.”
Jeez, Carl…sorry about your dog, man.
Carl’s “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” negotiation is exactly what happens, even unto insanity.
There is this report on cheese:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/us/07fat.html?_r=1
“It’s not like business where if you fail your life’s savings goes up in smoke, your mistress dumps you when the money runs out, you start to drink in despair, then your wife leaves you in disgust, and finally you bash your pick-up into a tree while backing over your own dog.”
And the Country Music Award for songwriting goes to…
Krugman calls for “death panels” to determine when people are shovel-ready.
Amanpour does a double-take.
Getting elected is the easy part, like being hired as CEO. The real test will be to see how well they govern and if they get re-elected. Or even run again.