Around the horn in the world of presidential politics, on
jobs and beyond:
If you were announcing a run for president as the first
major declared candidate, wouldn’t you have a website with your positions on
issues ready to go? Well, Ted Cruz
didn’t. Searches on “Ted Cruz” and “Ted
Cruz for President” brought up nothing new, so I can’t say much about what he
plans to do about the permanent jobs crisis.
His old stuff, mainly asserting that unemployment benefits are bad, wasn’t
too encouraging. I guess none of the 2.7
million Americans officially jobless for 27 weeks or more and legally required
to look for work weekly are in his inner circle. That may be a reason why you
can get 40 times your money by betting on him to win a year from November, as
you can on, say, Martin O'Malley.
Speaking of politicians making stupid statements, get a load
of Ben Carson! The man is a
neurosurgeon. You can’t get into that
specialty by just choosing it – you need to beat out lots of well-qualified
doctors (not just medical students) to get the training you need. Bet that every single neurosurgeon in the
country would qualify for Mensa, going away.
I see how he might need to appeal to his base by comparing gay marriage
to bestiality, or saying Obama is “like a psychopath,” but how can anyone of
that intelligence say that men are gay by choice? Carson, somehow, makes me want to root for
him – he can be partially excused by now being more a politician than anything
else, and wrote a good, remarkably thoughtful book about what he thinks – but there’s
a difference between routine pandering or spouting ideology you think will go
down well, and saying things which are clearly wrong. Which, since it calls his grip on reality
into question, I don’t like at all. As
for Carson on jobs – well, what does he REALLY think? Will we ever know?
How about Scott Walker?
Radio host Rush Limbaugh has seemed to endorse him, at least for now,
and sportsbook.ag has him as the second most likely Republican to become our
next president, at 9½ to 1 behind Jeb Bush at 6½ to 1. He’s had his doubtful statements too, and his
lack of a bachelor’s degree all these years on is strange, but he has the right
view on labor unions. As classic
business author Robert Townsend put it, unions served a noble purpose once, but
now they’re part of the problem. There
is all the difference in the world between reigning in the abuses of the early
(and not so early) Industrial Revolution, when few knew and too many didn’t
care how long, hard, and unsafely people could work, and getting the most from
governmental employers with little or no incentive to limit pay and perks. Ultimately, unions cost jobs, which is why
Walker did the right thing in leading Wisconsin to right-to-work status. Could he be good for jobs in other ways
too? We’ll see as the campaign
progresses.
Still no word from Hillary Clinton on employment. Being way in front, Emailgate
notwithstanding, with odds of 5 to 3 against in the 2016 election, has made her
more noncommittal than ever. Since she’s
moderate, it would be consistent with her views to tone down pushes for higher
minimum wages, which are now popping up here and there anyway, and campaign on
a national infrastructure project. But
I’m not holding my breath.
Then there is Chris Christie, with both good and bad
attributes of being forceful. He’d love
to lead a 1950s Chicago-style “machine,” in which people on his side were
assured of decent jobs if they got out the vote, but the time for that sort of
thing has passed even in that city – you could have asked Representative Dan
Rostenkowski, who tried to reinstate one and ended up wearing stripes. Could Christie lean on possible employers to
make more work available? That possibility
alone could make him a fine candidate – but I don’t know if he would or could. So I’ll still go with the hope of Jeb Bush,
if he’s not too beholden to his fellow one-percenters to realize they can’t
make money if the bulk of Americans have none to spend.
As for political views, America’s problem goes deeper than
anything above. Why is it that the
combinations of opinions are as set as they are? Why do almost all of those who think there is
no human-caused climate change also oppose gun control? Does it make sense that those against capital
punishment are consistently in favor of more spending on social programs? Would someone from Mars see it as logical
that humans seeing government as more of a problem than big business tend
heavily to see abortion as murder? Can’t
be. The answer is that most of us make
complex realities easier by going with, in effect, a slate of opinions. That is unexamined, and, if Socrates said,
the unexamined life is not worth living, we are falling short. If Americans were more independent in chosen
views, we would reach the right answers more often as a country. We are not doing well at that now, and, strangely
enough, think almost everyone on both sides, and in the middle would
agree. Will we ever be up to that
challenge?
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