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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Views on government
  • Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:54:02 -0500


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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