How To Get Enronned 1
Have people with experience run the government like a business:
“We need a businessman as president.” Or, “We’re at war. We need a military man as president.” Or, “We need the candidate with the most experience.”
That would make Robert Byrd No. 1 on any list. He’s been in the Senate since 1959. I shudder to think of the centrists who in 2000 thought that gravel-voiced Dick Cheney’s experience (in Congress and the Ford and George H. W. Bush administrations) gave the ticket of Bush-Cheney an edge in their minds.
Donald Rumsfeld (Nixon administration, Ford administration, Reagan administration, four terms in Congress): Now, there was experience. Not to mention, he was a businessman. Who better?
What we have with the current administration is specialization run amok. We have businessmen, experienced hands, who say they know how to run government. And, well, they don’t. I see the evils of specialization inherent in a war that was framed as protecting Americans from terrorists but became a war to “spread freedom.” Now it reverts to a war against terrorists. And who can oppose that?
March 5, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I wouldn’t put Byrd in the White House, but I do think it would be kind of cool to make him chairman of the EEOC.