I just finished reading Tom Elias’s “Don’t Believe Scare Talk on Business Flight, Tax Burden.” I must congratulate him for being the first columnist I ever read that plainly states: “In fact, no governor can really take credit for California’s new jobs, unless the voters are naive enough to believe such claims.”
H.L. Mencken is credited with saying: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” What Mencken actually wrote was “No one in the world, so far as I know…has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” (Chicago Tribune September 19, 1926).
In essence it is the same thing.
Mencken also wrote: “As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” (Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920) [I think we have at long last reached that point with Bush Baby at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.]
Regarding Elias’s comments about governors not creating jobs, it should include presidents and mayors. The only jobs these political hacks create are more government jobs paid by us “poor” taxpayers. When Wal-Mart or McDonald’s hires a new clerk or Maytag closes a factory and moves off-shore, the president, governor, or mayor had no input in these corporate decisions or decisions made daily by “mom-pop” stores.
Perhaps Elias, or another columnist, might tackle the issue of the qualifications and experiences and background (or lack thereof) of the potential presidential candidates for 2008 for both political parties.
In my opinion, any one who believes that the COMBINED qualifications, experiences and background of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich and Barack Obama would qualify any of them to be president of this country, would be indeed naive. None of them, or a combined total of their qualifications, etc., would permit them to be hired to run any Fortune 500 company – perhaps in middle management. But again it was Mencken who observed that: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”
President Eisenhower noted that: “Some day there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in their estimates can be made with little or no damage. If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think of what could happen in this country.” (Letter to Everett E. “Swede” Hazlett, August 20, 1956)
In recent years this country has suffered enough with individuals with limited ability (from either political party) sitting in the White House. It is about time we get someone in there that has the ability, background, experience, etc. to run this country.
Norman Axe
Santa Monica
