A Courageous Leader?

From www.cafehayek.com:

"I forget the name of the guest you interviewed earlier today who, praising last-night's speech by President Obama on health-care, described Mr. Obama as being "a courageous leader."

Please contact your guest and ask her to read the editorial in today's Washington Post entitled "Slashing Tires <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/10/AR2009091003629.html> " - and in particular its opening lines: "President Obama has maintained a conspicuous ambiguity about trade policy, sympathetically absorbing and sometimes restating the arguments both for and against free trade but not really committing himself on any particular issue."

The Post describes here a man neither courageous nor leading-the-way but, rather, a standard-issue politician - which is to say, a shark as duplicitous as he is pompous, and as skilled at fraud and flattery as he is hungry for power and glory.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

"l cannot for the life of me understand the appeal that politicians have for many people. Nearly all successful politicians - approximately 999 out of every 999.00001 of them - strike me as being, at the very best, buffoons. Through less-romantic lenses they are accurately seen to be shameless ego-maniacs driven by gluttony for power and celebrity status. " Don Boudreaux

Importance of Rules

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 12:17 PM PDT

"Here's a letter that I sent a couple of days ago to the Wall Street Journal:

Chris Daly correctly argues that the 17th amendment - which provides for direct election of U.S. senators - is unwise (Letters <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574387131863977664.html> , Sept. 9). As George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki <http://www.law.gmu.edu/faculty/directory/fulltime/zywicki_todd> shows in his pioneering research into this amendment, it eased the way for special-interest groups to pick the pockets of consumers and taxpayers.

Prior to ratification of the 17th amendment, to achieve their goals interest groups had to persuade both the representatives of the populace (in the House) and the representatives of state governments (in the Senate). Members of this latter group were eager to maintain their own power rather than cede it to Washington. The high cost of persuading these two diverse groups to support any piece of interest-group legislation kept such legislation to a minimum. Now, however, because members of the House and members of the Senate are elected from the same pool of voters, interest-groups' costs of lobbying Congress for special privileges are greatly reduced. The result is the explosion of special-interest dominance over politics that we've seen during the 20th century - and continuing into the 21st. " Donald J. Boudreaux

"I'm both deeply saddened and deeply disturbed by the letter in your pages today from Jane Powers lt;http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2009/09/09/her_kids_have_homework_now/> who, writing about Pres. Obama's speech to schoolchildren, declared that "Before I even listened to the speech, I felt that the office of the president of the United States commands respect regardless of who occupies it."

In a free society, not even the loftiest office should command respect "regardless of who occupies it." And the notion that the U.S. presidency is lofty or respectable in any ethically significant sense is ludicrous. As Saul Bellow said about politicians <http://thinkexist.com/quotation/take_our_politicians-they-re_a_bunch_of_yo-yos/219240.html> , "they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize." "Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux