Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers is in the running for a top house leadership post, majority whip. I don’t know if he will get it, but I am glad that he is running for it. Matter of fact, that would make me more inclined to vote for him if he ever runs for governor, senator, or president.
That’s because I have a crazy idea about our government. I think that before you run it, you ought to know something about how it works. That would seem to be common-sense, but not in politics anymore. For the last thirty years, we have decided that we value ignorance and inexperience more than their opposites.
Candidates from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush ran for President by denouncing the Washington establishment. They weren’t going to be like all of those corrupt Capitol insiders. No sir. The trouble starts when they actually get elected, without knowing how the system works. This is less of a problem for Republicans. They have controlled the presidency for most of the last 40 years, and have a far larger corps of available staffers who have worked in various administrations and know the ropes.
But it’s not so easy for the Democrats. The only two presidents they’ve elected in that time were small-state Southern governors with no Washington experience, and the result was not pretty.
Carter’s chief aide, Hamilton Jordan, was brash, arrogant, and so despised by the Democrats in Congress that they called him “Hannibal Jerkin.” As a result, much of the Carter agenda went no place. Bill Clinton ran into the same problem with his national health insurance plan. Republican leaders later admitted that if he’d had a history of dealing with Congress, a plan would have gone through.
Helen Thomas, the dean of the Washington Press Corps, told me it takes an inexperienced president two years to learn the ropes, and by that time, his honeymoon is over, and it is too late.
Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, on the other hand, were not guys you’d like to party with. But they had boatloads of Washington experience, and got much of their agendas done. That doesn’t mean there isn’t corruption at high levels. Nor does it mean that a new breeze is always a bad idea.
But what would you say to someone who had cancer, and told you, “I don’t want to go to one of bureaucratic, medical school type doctors. No, I am going to be treated by Dean over at the dry cleaners. He’s a bright guy and reads a lot about medicine, and I think he has some new ideas.” You would tell me, I hope, that this was nuts. Next time you go to vote to put someone in charge of the nation, or even the ten million residents of Michigan . . . you might keep that in mind.
I heard this on the radio and almost drove off the road: you honestly believe that Nationalized Health Care failed because Republicans didn't think Clinton was a good administrator? A republican told you this? Straight faced?
Posted by: Kringe | January 25, 2006 at 08:21 PM