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The Businessman Canard -- It’s not impt not to be a pol; it's impt to be a really good one
National Review Online ^ | October 11, 2011 | Rick Lowry

Posted on 10/28/2011 9:55:58 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife

There is no better testament to the marketing prowess of Herman Cain than that he gets applause when he tells audiences he’s not a politician — in the course of seeking their votes for the highest political office in the land.

Mitt Romney plays a version of the same card, arguing that “career politicians got us into this mess, and they simply don’t know how to get us out."

If Cain and Romney think so poorly of politics as a vocation, they could easily save themselves from any further taint. They could drop their arduous schedules, their fundraising pleas, their very public roles that open them up to ridicule and attack, and return to comfortable lives that would be welcomed by the vast majority of Americans who don’t thirst after political distinction.

Of course, neither will fold up shop until it becomes impossible to go on, or he succeeds. They don’t have the courage of what they want us to believe are their anti-politician convictions.

Cain’s status as a non-officeholder is entirely an accident of the poor judgment of Republican primary voters in his state of Georgia. He ran for the nomination to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He lost. Had he won, he might well be in his seventh year and second term in the Senate, where politicians go to live out their days blissfully free of any serious responsibilities. Even politicians find the Senate stifling and unproductive, so it’s an odd place for Herman Cain — man of action and scourge of the politician — to have wanted to land.

Romney avoided becoming a career politician by a similar route. He ran for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts in 1994 and lost, ran for governor of the state in 2002 and served one term before setting his sights on higher office, and ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2008 and lost. He’s been running for president ever since. All in all, he’s made a pretty good political career out of not being a career politician.

The business experience of a Cain or a Romney is enriching, no doubt. They are more impressive for it. But what will be more relevant if Romney becomes president, his time as management consultant or his time as governor of Massachusetts? Romney was a flawed candidate in 2008 and — by most accounts — is a better candidate now. That has everything to do with having acquired more political experience by passing through the fire of running for president once before.

Distaste with the political establishment shouldn’t become distaste for the act of officeholding. Consider the figures the Tea Party admires most. The tea-party standard-bearer Jim DeMint is a former three-term congressman and is now in his second term as a senator from South Carolina. The rising star Marco Rubio spent about ten years in the Florida legislature and served as speaker of the Florida house before winning election to the U.S. Senate in 2010. If business experience were all important, the successful former Goldman Sachs executive Jon Corzine would have been a blessing to New Jersey as governor, and his politico successor — former freeholder, candidate for the legislature, and U.S. attorney Chris Christie — a flat failure.

Amid the slings of outrageous fortune, the politician learns how to inspire and persuade, how to avoid unnecessary minefields and pick his fights, when to accommodate his opponents and when to confront them, how to build a coalition and keep it together. A businessman might have similar challenges, but they aren’t played out in the public arena in the context of a balky, democratic political system that rarely moves on the basis of one man’s orders.

And the businessman’s work doesn’t depend on a philosophical commitment to a set of ideas. The best politicians, like the non-businessman Ronald Reagan, translate their principles into reality in a way that rises to statesmanship. It’s not important not to be a politician; it’s important to be a really good one.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: economy; executive; perry; perry2012; perryastroturfing; politics; smearcain
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To: Liberty Valance

You can see it only because it’s in your cache; if you delete your cache, you’ll never see it again.


61 posted on 10/28/2011 3:13:58 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (No Federal Sales Tax - No Way!)
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To: Grunthor

Grinchrich’s own is running right and governing left.

His term as speaker ruined our chances of shutting down the UN, and of ever ending socialism in the US.


62 posted on 10/28/2011 3:17:02 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (No Federal Sales Tax - No Way!)
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To: editor-surveyor

OK - Thanks.


63 posted on 10/28/2011 3:17:52 PM PDT by Liberty Valance (Keep a simple manner for a happy life :o)
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To: Sherman Logan
hat it will have to be made up by increasing taxes on low and middle income people

Nope. The flaw in your "logic" is the assumption that the Federal Government must be given double digit budget increases year in and year out.

It doesn't. It can, and must, get smaller. When Govt debt equals 100% GDP you MUST fix the broken tax and spend political system. You cannot just ignore it and hope the problem goes away.

64 posted on 10/28/2011 3:50:57 PM PDT by MNJohnnie (Giving more money to DC to fix the Debt is like giving free drugs to addicts think it will cure them)
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To: editor-surveyor
We know how much you like establishment goons, but to see any irony in a citizen trying to fix the problems that your elitist owners made is a stretch.
The We are badly mistaken. I see no irony in citizens wanting to fix problems. Either you missed the irony or it missed you.
65 posted on 10/28/2011 4:08:23 PM PDT by Quicksilver (Defeat Obama - zero-sum games will get us Zero, again.)
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To: Quicksilver

There’s no irony there to miss; all that’s there for the author is a total lack of respect for his own credibility, if he has any left.


66 posted on 10/28/2011 5:57:33 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (No Federal Sales Tax - No Way!)
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To: MNJohnnie

>> “It doesn’t. It can, and must, get smaller.” <<

.
Yes, it can, but that will require monitizing enough of the debt that the remainder can be paid down. That will have to have some inflationary effect, but how much is not predictable.


67 posted on 10/28/2011 6:02:38 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (No Federal Sales Tax - No Way!)
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To: MNJohnnie

Oh, I agree that the government must be reduced in size.

But that is a different question entirely of what the fiscal impact of a particular tax scheme is.


68 posted on 10/28/2011 6:18:32 PM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: Grunthor
This is not the type of race that the voters want to see. The voters want to see ideas calmly and rationally discussed as if these men were adults.

This is also why Perry and Romney need to accept the invitation to a Tea Party-hosted debate in Texas that's one-on-one and moderator-free. Cain and Gingrich are going to do it a week from tomorrow, and Perry and Romney still won't commit to one. Each candidate has a total of an hour and 15 minutes to discuss their plans. There's no moderators out to sic them on each other and no reason for them to lay into one another. It's a chance for them to contrast themselves with the other candidates.
69 posted on 10/28/2011 6:46:07 PM PDT by af_vet_rr
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To: Brookhaven
If I were in charge for one day, the first thing I would do is eliminate all pensions for elective office at all levels of government. Elective office is a duty that SHOULD (perhaps must?) be a sacrifice, not a gateway to the good life.

Excellent idea. Let them contribute to a 401(k) like the rest of us who pull the load.

They wanted to make Washington king and he declined. Then they wanted to make him president for life and he declined that as well. The modern day examples of public "servants" who decline power offered to them are few and far between. J.Edgar Hoover was one.

70 posted on 10/29/2011 2:11:40 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (Obama: Fake black man. Fake Messiah. Fake American. How many fakes can you fit in one Zer0?)
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