When I was in college I was friendly with a very interesting man named Kevin who had some rather unusual political ideas. One of them was that democracy was a failure, and that we’d all be better off living under a monarchy. His main thesis was that a king is appointed for life, and thinks long term. A president is elected for 4 or 8 years, and thinks in the short term. While I disagreed with his conclusions, his premise has been repeatedly proven correct by the current crop of Washington decision makers. Perhaps no example could be better provided than the “gas tax holiday” proposed by both McCain and Clinton. It is, simply put, awful public policy. Yet high ranking politicians from both parties support it. Why? Because in the short term it will give them the results they want – more votes, and less important, perhaps some marginal economic stimulation in the short term. Such short-sighted policies are frequently supported by politicians who simply have no incentive to look beyond the next election cycle or two, and is one of the primary reasons this country is in such an economic mess.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 3:03 pm by Ari and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.