The late Milton Friedman commented recently that he had concluded that the best political make-up for the federal government was one that had the greatest likelihood to develop gridlock because of the damaging policies that the government enacts when one party or the other controls both the legislative and executive branches. In this TCS Daily op-ed, Arnold Kling of EconLog channels that thought:

The conventional wisdom is that we would be better off if politically powerful leaders were less mediocre. Instead, my view is that we would be better off if mediocre political leaders were less powerful. [. . .]
We have to expect mediocrity from political leaders. They are selected by a very unreliable process. In general, I try to avoid contact with narcissists who spend their time pleading for money. Those are hardly the intellectual and emotional characteristics that make someone admirable, yet they are the traits of people who go into politics. [. . .]
The libertarian view is that private institutions, both for-profit and non-profit, are better at problem-solving than government institutions. Regardless of whether political leadership is wise or mediocre, our goal should be to limit the damage that public officials can do. Do not demand that they “solve” health care, “fix” education, or launch a “Manhattan project” for energy independence. Even for experts, those are impossible tasks. The harder we press our existing leaders to address these issues, the more trouble they are going to cause.
The belief that the problem with government is the particular individuals in power is dangerous. The myth is that somewhere out there we could find great leaders who could use government to solve all of our problems. Instead, we need to be vigilant against the enlargement of government, by either mediocre or expert leaders.
Do not look upon the electoral process as a search for great leaders. At best, it gives us an opportunity for damage control.

This NY Sunday Times article reviews Former White House Chief of Staff, Secretary of State and Secretary of Treasury James Baker, III co-chairmanship of the Iraq Study Group, which is currently scheduled to deliver its report to the President by mid-December. Mr. Baker, who spends most of his time these days at the Baker Institute at Houston’s Rice University, is described in the article as wanting the chairmanship of the Iraq Group to be the template for his role as an elder statesman in the coming years:

Now, at 76, Mr. Baker is in high diplomat mode, on a mission, friends and supporters say, to aid his country and his president ó and, while he is at it, seal his legacy in the realm of statesmen, a sphere he cares about far more than politics.
ìI think heíd like to be remembered as a 21st-century Disraeli,î said Leon Panetta, a Democratic member of the group, referring to the 19th-century British statesman and prime minister. ìI think deep down he is someone who believes that his diplomatic career, in many ways, helped change the world.î

Read the entire article.

As noted in this post from late 2004, a decent case can be made that former Democratic vice-presidential candidate was the difference in costing John Kerry the close 2004 Presidential election, particularly after his Benny Hinn imitation on the campaign trail.
But now as Edwards postures toward a run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2008, he provided us an exhibition of hypocrisy that is brazen even by Washington, D.C. standards. On the same day that Edwards was bashing Wal-Mart on a conference call with labor leaders, an Edwards “aide” was requesting that the local Wal-Mart bump the former senator to the front of the line to get a Playstation 3 for his son. Reason’s Jeff Taylor wryly observes:

The alternative to a Democratic presidential campaign marked by a downward spiral of Pythonseque depravation one-upsmanship might actually address issues like the federal entitlement explosion or comprehensive income tax reform, two areas where Republicans have failed miserably to advance any coherent solution. Should Edwards or Hillary Clinton or someone find away to talk about these things without class-warfare cant, they’ll have a head start on the general election.
In any event, maybe the best thing for Wal-Mart to do is stop chortling and go ahead and give John Edwards a PS3 and a couple games. Throw in a flat-panel too. Maybe that way he’ll reacquaint himself with American prosperity and abundance and be a better candidate for the experience.

Is Hillary Clinton even going to have any competition for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination?

Ben Witherington is a noted New Testament scholar at Asbury Theological Institute in Wilmore, Kentucky near Lexington, which is not the typical place that former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay would normally have been trolling for money during his heyday in Congress. In this post explaining the danger for Evangelical Christians in aligning themselves with either major political party, Dr. Witherington passes along the following anecdote about DeLay:

Several years ago I was contacted by Tom DeLay. He figured since I was a well known white Evangelical I must be on his side on a host of things. I was invited to the White House, and I was named Kentucky Business Man of the Year. I have the plaque sitting in my office framed to prove it. Now, I am no businessman. Just ask my wife. For five years I ran a little coffee shop in Wilmore for our Christian students as a ministry to them– its called Solomon’s Porch, and its still up and running, employing and feeding students and helping them work their way through college and seminary. Its a good ministry, but its not a business that made money. In fact I lost $40,000 helping those students during that time. I was definitely not a Kentucky Businessman of the Year! There were many who did better than I, and I could talk at length about the plight of small businesses which are taxed right out of existence. Several previous restaurants in that spot had not lasted more than about six months. Wilmore is only a town of some 5,000 souls.

Continue reading →

It’s Election Day 2006, and Houston’s foremost political Charles Kuffner passes along that the Texas Secretary of State is predicting that only 36 percent of the registered voters in Texas will cast ballots.
On first impression, such a small turnout seems pretty pathetic.
But on second thought, Greg Mankiw explains why maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
Nonetheless, I hope you vote in the election.

I swear, you can’t make this stuff up. The Wall Street Journal’s airline travel reporter Scott McCartney reports ($) (see McCartney’s follow-up article here) about the Transportation Security Administration’s latest campaign to make airline travel a complete and utter aggravation:

An airport security screener sat at a Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport checkpoint beside a plastic tub filled with small cans of shaving cream and tiny tubes of toothpaste.
Were they contraband items that ran afoul of safety rules?
“No, people didn’t have quart-size plastic bags,” the Transportation Security Administration official said.
Where’s Seinfeld when you need him? In a quintessential bureaucratic bedevilment, the TSA allows small bottles and tubes of liquids to be carried aboard airplanes only if they are enclosed in a quart-size, zip-top plastic bag. No gallon bags. No fold-over sandwich bags. Even if you have only one bottle on you, it must be carried in a quart-size, zip-top plastic bag. Screeners confiscate any nonconforming items or send travelers to ticket counters to check luggage.
That’s just one of the frustrations travelers have found as TSA began implementing new rules on liquids last month and, in the eyes of some travelers, seemingly prohibited common sense. [. . .]
Either frustrated or confused by the new rules, or unable to squeeze all they need into a quart-size bag, passengers continue to check baggage at elevated rates, airlines say. And TSA is encouraging that for passengers who don’t want to mess with quart zip-top bags.

All of this to reassure us that airline travel is safe from terrorists? Seems more like security theater to me.