[Homestead] Views on government
Gene GeRue
genegerue at ruralize.com
Wed Jun 11 11:54:02 EDT 2008
On Jun 11, 2008, at 10:23 AM, Clansgian at wmconnect.com wrote:
>
>
>>> I therefore want a president who makes very good appointments.
>>
>
> I will submit to you, Gene, that you want nothing of the sort. . . .
> If he had appointed very, very competent people, I am thinking that
> instead
> of just invading Afghanistan and Iraq, he could have managed to also
> invade
> Iran and perhaps half a dozen other countries .... Venezuela, perhaps.
Your view of good appointments differs from mine. I want people who
get the job done efficiently, that is with least human and treasury
cost, and as fast as possible. A competent Secretary of Defense would
have us out of Iraq by now or would have resigned.
>
> Instead of acquiring a few trillion dollars war debt and
> prescription drug
> debt, a competent president with very sharp appoitees might have
> been able to
> make it several scores of trillions of debt.
>
Again, my definition of competent people is of those who would have
done all that has been done with far less waste.
> So ... would you rather have had Bush's appointees to be much more
> capable of
> doing his bidding that the ones we've had?
GWB would rather that the Iraq invasion and country building in his
design have been done in a short period of time. So, yes, in that
regard.
>
> No, you can't go back and change the premise by saying if they were
> *really*
> competent, they would have talked him out of the war altogether.
That's another issue. Better advisors might well have done just that--
with an intelligent, open-minded president who understands
fallibility. Not the managers, the advisors. Think Brent Scowcroft and
Colin Powell under a more open, intelligent president
.
> This is like
> the answers you used to get from the Oracle at Delphi. If you
> really think
> competence in appointees is the thing,
Excellence in appointments is just one thing. I never said it is the
thing. You did. Restrain that bad habit, please.
> you get the screwed world with war
> fronts in eleven countries all at the same time.
I don't see any logic there.
>
> Still wan Bush's appointees to have been competent?
Ask the people of New Orleans.
>
> Like that, Obama's goal isn't for smaller government, spending
> less. His
> definition of 'spending efficiently' isn't likely to be the same as
> yours. Do
> you want his appointees to be very good at deploying Liberation
> Theology and
> Marxism? </HTML>
Jeez, when you get on an extrapolation roll, you really roll. This is
what I said:
"Choosing the best people is a leadership skill that we need."
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