True Confessions of a Befuddled Treasury Secretary
This past week, Little Timmy the Treasury Secretary made a remarkable public confession, which of course the mainstream media barely noticed. He said that the administration was trying different things and experimenting with their best ideas about the economy. Trying. Experimenting.
The Obama administration has traveled far, from arrogant campaign certainties to admitting that they're running experiments - the experiments of amateurs, turning out badly.
We have to appreciate Tim's sudden burst of honesty. It's refreshing to hear Obama's pick for running the entire economy (despite being guilty of tax evasion) confess the obvious, that they haven't the faintest idea of what they're doing. They're just trying things out. Turns out the Saturday Night Live skit of over a year ago, with either Timmy or Obama himself - I forget which - inviting and taking random calls from people competing to offer the best idea for rescuing the economy was prescient.
Despite this confession, Timmy remains, his team remains, the president remains. He has his foot on the spending gas pedal, concocting scheme after scheme, fighting mightily to get his hands on more credit and more taxpayers' money to fund failed experiments. Timmy and his boss are blind men driving cars into trees and demanding more cars.
Here's a really radical idea: get rid of all the folks who know nothing about job creation or turning around cash-strapped enterprises in crisis, who have never met a payroll, never solved an economic problem anywhere but in theoretical exercises at universities. Get one of those bulldozers sitting idle 'cuz, as the President confessed - laughing about it - 'those projects just weren't as shovel-ready as we thought' and use it to bulldoze all these grand experimenters out.
It just might be a nifty, common-sense idea to replace Timmy & co. with people who don't need to experiment, but who have, in real life, actually gotten their hands dirty and created successful companies or rescued ones in trouble. Adults who have, in real life, tackled complex and difficult fiscal crisis and won. Somebody who has actually created jobs.
Obama could do that right now. He could throw all his bums out and call Herman Cain and Mitt Romney, Lee Iacocca and Jack Welch. Heck, he could yell 'Help!' to any small business owner picked by throwing darts.
Better yet, the president could do the honorable thing and resign and take his whole experimental government with him. Has anybody but a TV weatherman ever been so wrong about so many things he expressed absolute certainty about? Closing Gitmo? I think it's still open. Restoring happy relations with the entire world? Seems we've got more enemies, fewer allies, less committed allies, one worsened war, one new one, two pending, and China and Russia scolding us. Passing the stimulus would keep unemployment under 8 percent? Oops. The aforementioned shovel-ready jobs that weren't. On and on.
Bush was fiscally irresponsible. For Obama's adding a record-breaking $4-trillion to the debt, we need a word other than irresponsible. This guy couldn't predict rain if he was standing outside in a torrential downpour. Lately he's been insisting there's no reason to fear a double-dip recession. Run for cover - which is what corporate and individual investors as well as small business owners are doing. Create jobs? Are you kidding? We're stocking up on umbrellas.
Imagine if Michelle Bachmann said that she knew nothing about making the economy work, and would surround herself with the identically ignorant. But we could count on her to give it the old college try, and run the best experiments she could think of, and by gum 'n golly, maybe something'll work. Matthews would get a thrill up his leg. Wallace would ask: are you a flake? So you might think Tiny Tim's confession deserved first-item, lead-story position on newscasts and heated discussion on talk shows.
Unfortunately, the Casey Anthony trial and Bachmann's confusion about John Quincy Adams have just been too darned important.
