Quote of the Day

…what has helped the less fortunate is economic growth. Today’s elderly are affluent not because of Social Security, but because of all of the wealth created by private sector innovation over their lifetimes. Government involvement in health care and education is an impediment to progress in those fields. Job training and welfare are demonstrable failures. I think that treating a national community like a family is a grave intellectual error. A national unit is an institution that creates a legal framework for a large group of strangers to interact. A family is a small group that interacts on the basis of personal bonds. Strengthening government serves to weaken families and other vital civic institutions.

Arnold Kling

(You absolutley must RTWT. Mr. Kling puts terribly important ideas across in clear, plain English.)

Old, Old News

Glenn Reynolds quotes Roger Simon who notes that �People like Reid, Hastert, Pelosi are complete mediocrities� and that �something is fundamentally wrong� that such people are in the upper reaches of government. Reynolds concludes that �Politics is not attracting our best people.�

This has been an accurate complaint since immediately after the Founding generation. But, still, the whole thing worked anyway, and always has.

Lord Bryce, in his classic American Commonwealth (1888), had a famous chapter entitled Why the Best Men do not Go into Politics. Some of the details of his analysis are outdated, but the general reasoning is still sound. I cannot do justice to it, so go read it, but a very rough sketch goes as follows. The fact is that being in Congress is not a very good career. It was not then and it is not now. It is precarious, and Americans are rarely so wealthy that they can withstand having their career obliterated without suffering a great personal loss. Service in Congress removes the member from his own district where his future business contacts would have to be. It incapacitates the member for other work during and after his term of service. And there is the mundane and dreary nature of the day-to-day work of congresssmen. There is little opportunity for politicians to engage in very exciting activity, thankfully, very often, which would call for heroic or even truly creative effort. What we would call opportunity costs � the far superior chances for great material success, at lower risk, in the private economy lead to the same outcome in 2006 as they did in 1888.

Bryce expressly rules out any idea that the tough treatment politicians get is any reason why American politicians are so noticeably bad:

It may however be alleged that I have omitted one significant ground for the distaste of �the best people� for public life, viz., the bad company they would have to keep, the general vulgarity of tone in politics, the exposure to invective or ribaldry by hostile speakers and a reckless press.
I omit this ground because it seems insignificant. In every country a politician has to associate with men whom he despises and distrusts, and those whom he most despises and distrusts are sometimes those whose so-called social rank is highest�the sons or nephews of great nobles. In every country he is exposed to misrepresentation and abuse, and the most galling misrepresentations are not the coarse and incredible ones, but those which have a semblance of probability, which delicately discolour his motives and ingeniously pervert his words. A statesman must soon learn, even in decorous England or punctilious France or polished Italy, to disregard all this, and rely upon his conscience for his peace of mind, and upon his conduct for the respect of his countrymen. If he can do so in England or France or Italy, he may do so in America also.

It has always been an ugly game, in a country where the other games are more appealing, and the people who go into it are rarely going to be our �best� people by any reasonable criterion.

I strongly advise you to read the whole Bryce chapter. It is not long.

Having mediocre politicians is a consequence of our having a superb private economy. We are, actually, fortunate that we have some relatively competent and public-spirited people in public life at all.

This is not a problem with a solution, but a permanent, structural condition.

Nor is it one that needs to concern us much.

We do not rely for the success of our public institutions that they be staffed by geniuses or the shining lights of the age. To the contrary, as Walter Bagehot noted, we rely on our legislatures to act in the aggregate, to be wiser and abler collectively, or at least able to discern and respond to the public mood and public interest, than the mere sum of its parts, to capture the “wisdom of crowds”. The process seems to work. Despite all its defects, our Congress, in much this form, has legislated for the country throughout its rise from a strip along the Eastern Seaboard to global power. The system works despite the apparent, even manifest, deficiencies of its components, as it it was designed to do.

The Disunited States of America


Dean Barnett writes movingly
about his personal experience on 9/11/2001. And
he concludes with this:

IT HAS BECOME A TRITE LAMENT that 9/11 brought us together, and it’s a
shame that since then we’ve come apart. But 9/11 brought us together because
of two transitory emotions – sadness and rage. Once those emotions calmed
down, once our open wounds turned into scars, it was inevitable that our
differences would resurface.

When the flags came out in the aftermath of 9/11, they didn’t signify a
consensus on where we would go from there. They symbolized a consensus that we
were all in pain, all anguished. When the time came to move on, disagreements
inevitably (and not improperly) came regarding exactly how we should move on.

Even though a thorough review of 9/11, including both its lead-up and
aftermath, won’t provide an obvious path forward that everyone will agree on,
there are some valuable lessons we can draw from that awful day. Looking back,
we can clearly see the remorseless murderers that our enemies are – that
knowledge is instructive. And we can also see that they are numerous. That,
too, is important to take into account.

But the most important lesson we can take from 9/11 is this: We must take
every possible step to ensure never again.
Never again
will we allow ourselves to feel the way we did that
day. Never again will we be so blind to storm clouds
as they gather. Never again will we choose to believe
comforting lies rather than disquieting truths.

9/11 didn’t bring us together. It’s true that in the immediate
aftermath of the event that we all felt sadness and rage. But not about the same
things.

Read more

Nixon: “Screw ‘Em”

Mark Safranski has had two good posts about Nixon, here and here, and promised one or two more. Nixon is one of my pet obsessions.

These posts reminded me of an anecdote about Nixon from R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.�s book The Conservative Crack-Up, which came out in 1992. Tyrrell was pretty astute in its prognostication, though he failed to foresee the 1994 takeover of the House � �Newt Gingrich� does not appear in his index. The book is mostly a backward look at the rise of the Conservative movement, focusing on an idiosyncratic mix of interesting figures whom Tyrrell had known — Reagan, Irving Kristol, Clare Booth Luce, Malcolm Muggeridge, Luigi Barzini. I think Tyrrell lost his way during the Clinton years, after foolishly moving from beautiful Bloomington, Indiana to the snakepit on the Potomac, and devoting the entire period to unproductive scandal-mongering. But “Crack-Up” is a good book, and there are copies literally selling for a quarter.

Here is Tyrell on Nixon:

The only glimmer I ever caught of the RN that prowled through Liberal nightmares came while we were riding along the East River Drive in the back of his ancient armored limousine. He was silently peering out on a bleak expanse of the river. We were on the last lap of the 1980 election. Republicans were in a sweat over reports of an impending hostage swap between Jimmy Carter and the Ayatollah. � [O]n the eve of the 1980 election Carter was obviously pursuing a deal. It was in the headlines, and I naturally asked RN what he would do if he were president. �Cut a deal,� he replied impassively. I objected, and sought further explanation. An impatient RN turned to me and repeated: �You cut a deal,� and looking back toward the river he added ��and then you screw �em.� When I asked how, the former president�s impatience enlarged into exasperation: �There are a million ways to screw �em,� he said. �Tell them the deal is tied up on Capitol Hill. Tell them the material is lost in the pipeline.�

I miss Nixon.