Posted on 08/17/2008 6:04:53 AM PDT by kellynla
WASHINGTON -- Last August, John McCain's campaign was a guttering candle, out of money but flush with half-baked ideas that were unlikely to be improved by further baking. Anyway, to have many ideas is to have too many for a campaign's concluding sprint, and McCain's revival has not been robust enough to bring him even with Barack Obama. Now McCain's rejuvenated hopes rest on his ability to recast this election, focusing it on who should lead America in a world suddenly darkened by Russia's war of European conquest.
To begin the recasting, he should weed from the unkempt garden of his political thinking the populism which often seems like mere attitudinizing redeemed by insincerity. His silliness about sinful Wall Street and exploitative corporations cannot compete with Democratic entrees in the nonsense sweepstakes. Furthermore, his populism subverts his strength -- the perception that although he is an acquired taste, he is serious, hence incapable of self-celebratory froth such as "we are the ones we've been waiting for."
McCain's populism, if such there must be, should be distilled into one proposal that would be popular and, unlike most populism, not economically injurious. The proposal, for which he has expressed sympathy, is: No officer of any corporation receiving a federal subsidy, broadly defined, can be paid more than the highest federal civil servant ($124,010 for a GS-15). This would abruptly halt the galloping expansion of private economic entities -- is GM next? -- eager to become, in effect, joint ventures with Washington.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
This article is not very good. George Will must live in a cave or something.
“McCain’s populism, if such there must be, should be distilled into one proposal that would be popular and, unlike most populism, not economically injurious.”
DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW, PAY LESS
But no, George Will puts out some wordy nonsense that cannot be distilled to a rallying cry for the voters.
(sigh)
“No officer of any corporation receiving a federal subsidy, broadly defined, can be paid more than the highest federal civil servant ($124,010 for a GS-15).”
Is this a joke, or our we going to go completely down the road to government control of everything?
I read it again but I still think that Will is erring a bit on the dry side. While coming out strong against the fairness doctrine and card-check would be excellent. (McCain made a reference to it last night even.) As for McCain not coming even with Obama that is not true. He is nearly even and I think after last night he will bump a few points up though the press coverage is a bit light which is typical when a Republican looks good the left pretends it didn’t happen.
Will such a subsidy framework make government subsidies more or less attractive? The answer is less attractive - and that spells less government involvement in the economy in the long-run. If the government has any business doing something, it should do it as independently as possible from private interests. Not because there is anything wrong with efficiency or profit (these are great things), but because these benefits do not arise in a vacuum - there is no free lunch. Complete privatization (divorced entirely from taxpayer-derived funds) or elimination of government programs is the only salve for out of control spending.
And I don't want Congress or the White House telling the head of GM what he or she can and cannot be paid. If public-private partnerships are so bad, then get rid of them, don't muddy the waters further.
What an affected writing style. Get real.
If we wanted to stop the government from taking control of things, we wouldn't allow government subsidy of anything. If we see some subsidies as a necessary (or at least unavoidable) evil, I see nothing wrong with attaching some strings. I might allow a little higher cap, but I'd have no problem telling a company that if it wants the freedom to pay its executives higher salaries, it needs to figure out how to survive without government subsidies. If an executive can make himself worth millions of dollars a year by making his company wildly profitable, he should be free to earn millions of dollars a year. On the other hand, if his company must take government subsidies, he hasn't made his company all that profitable. Once he starts taking taxpayer dollars, the taxpayers have a right to put controls on his salary.
Bill
In Short ...
In promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities, and amicable philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a compacted conciseness, a clarified comprehensibility, a coalescent cogency, and a concatenated consistency.
Eschew obfuscation and all conglomeration of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement, and asinine affectations.
Let your extemporaneous descanting and unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and voracious vivacity without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast.
Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolificacy, and vain vapid verbosity.
In short: “Be brief and don’t use big words.”
Give me Krauthammer every time. George Will is an overeducated, elitist putz.
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