Shouldn't limited govt work and mostly private sector work be a disadvantage?

[pbrower2a]

I'm getting tired of hearing Romney talk about how he is best qualified to be President because he's not a career politician and has extensive work in the private sector. I have three problems with this.

1. I cannot think of any other profession where a limited amount of experience is seen an advantage. Romney's message is basically this: "I am best qualified to be President, because I have a limited amount of experience in government."

Maybe a low-skilled job in which burnout is a high likelihood.  Someone who gets burned out as a small-town city councilman or a district attorney is unlikely to have much of a career in elective office.  One can learn something from about every public office that one wins in an election or gets an appointment to. For a politician I want to see someone who can still learn and adapt. 

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Such overstates the importance of experience with responsibility for profit and loss as a qualifier for political office. We have thousands of people with P&L experience who have shown themselves capable of administering organizations. But do we elect hotel managers or restaurateurs to be President? Such  people might have extensive experience, but such experience is narrow.

Government, unlike a business, is not a profit-and-loss operation. War, diplomacy, education, public works projects, welfare/relief, and the administration of justice are not done for profit of the government.  Does anyone believe that the government works best if it maximizes tax revenues and minimizes services to the public to get maximal surpluses?

We waged World War II to keep America from being pillaged by Hitler and Tojo... and of course preventing the atrocities associated with their gangster regimes. It might be "profitable" to sell California to China... which would be highly unpopular in California and many other places. We set up most of the Interstate Highway System as freeways because such facilitated travel and highway safety. It was manifestly a good idea to lock Charles Manson away for life.     

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True except perhaps on the "personal life". Success as a politician (maybe a senior military officer after the war) is a strong indicator of success at the next level. How much success does one have in getting legislation passed? Does one have his name attached to a large number of bills introduced or is one a chair of a legislative committee? Of course oratory matters because such is how one leads from the Presidency (one clear distinction between a great President like FDR and a weak one like Dubya).

Personal life matters to the extent that egregious behavior indicates a contempt for life, property, and institutions. A criminal record (except on trumped up causes, as with Havel or Mandela) should be a reasonable disqualification. I'd have trouble with someone with a habit of extreme speeding (50 in a school zone?). The difference between getting away with trashing a hotel room and not getting away with it is having the funds or having relatives with the funds to bail one out; trashing a hotel room itself shows a contempt for property rights whether one gets six months in the county lock-up or whether Daddy comes up with $10K payable to some hotel company. Anyone can get into a bad matrimonial relationship and a divorce or be seduced into an affair if one has an impotent or frigid spouse... but a serial divorcee is probably not up to the ethical standard that most of us expect of someone in a position of great responsibility. Bankruptcy or business failure? One had better have solid exculpation. Judgment on other things  is relevant.         

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People can make their living in government and be conservatives. Tom Coburn is as an indisputable conservative as Carl Levin is an indisputable liberal.

[pbrower2a]

... (P)ublic workers create no profits and therefore should not be granted union representation unless their occupation is inherently dangerous (What are the primary purposes of a union? A) Ensure the workers gain a reasonable degree of the profits they help create and/or B) Ensure the safety of workers).

... and protect the rights of workers from abuse and exploitation. The State can exploit workers (think of Commie regimes that have "socialism without social justice"!)

Teachers can need unions if teachers are under pressure to do partisan politics, praise a certain group of elected officials, or give special breaks to the children of well-connected parents. I once heard one student threaten me that her mother as a school-board member would ensure that I never taught again if I referred that student to the principal. I stood my ground. (By the way -- if I were on the school board I would not tolerate such behavior from one of my kids). Teachers really shouldn't wear campaign buttons in the classroom and should not find administrators squeezing them for campaign donations or to work for partisan campaigns.

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I know ways in which to cut costs -- like using unpaid labor (conscripted soldiers) on construction projects, cutting corners in engineering, underfunding any government operation. 

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Wars and depressions bloat budget deficits as effectively as any welfare measures. But what does regulatory relief have to do with cutting the cost of government? Regulatory relief contributed to the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico... and huge federal costs.

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Eisenhower? One of his functions as a senior officer was to lobby Congress for military preparedness during the tough 1930s when America had other concerns. Reagan had been Governor of California, a very responsible position. Reagan did much advocacy for conservative causes before he was Governor.

Truman was a fine President but he was a failure as a retailer... and he established an oil company that took off after he sold out.

Most of the effective top politicians are attorneys -- probably because attorneys are intellectual generalists who can do everything but medicine, engineering, scientific research, and handling money. Who would do better? We have plenty of smart people -- college professors, physicians, dentists, veterinarians, engineers, accountants, pharmacists -- but they all usually lack something.

Elective politics really is a Darwinian method for winnowing out cranks, liars, crooks, and fools.

 

[pbrower2a]

Nobody is saying that the Gov't can or should be run like a business completely. That is an exaggeration.

Proprietors, or at the least shareholders, own a business. Businesses (except perhaps unions if one considers them businesses) are not set up for the welfare of employees, taxing authorities, creditors, suppliers, or customers. Any good done for these entities is coincidence or a necessary deal with outsiders.

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Job creation is not a primary concern of employers. If a corporation can increase productivity by reducing its staff it will, as many profitable companies have done even before the financial collapse. Note well that giant corporations frequently hire lobbyists to make such a claim... and of course control the politicians that the giant entity sponsored to electoral success through campaign contributions.

But avoid using the buzzword "competitiveness" when "profitability" is the reality. It may be good for a corporation that it gets outright subsidies, underpays and overworks workers, gets tax burdens shifted to everyone else, gets regulatory relief that might lead to some ecological  disaster or life-taking catastrophe for which the government pays, or even gets a war for profit or control of resources and markets. Any good that comes from capitalism is a byproduct of the profit motive even if the profit comes from meeting human needs and desires.

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Government can create the money supply. If you try to do so you face a long prison term. A government can of course print money to the extent of private productivity without inflation. Business (except in banks through fractional reserves) cannot create money.

That is not to say that government needs to show economy and efficiency.

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Don't be so sure. A CEO of a defense contractor has a powerful incentive to bleed the government on behalf of his good buddies at the defense contractor. Governor Rick Scott (R-FL), boss of a for-profit network of medical clinics before being elected Governor, has proved wildly unpopular in Florida. Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan, another entrepreneur-turned-Governor, gets approvals far below average. The ability to turn on a dime from loyalty to stockholders or one's own gain to public service is not easy.  Harshness in administrating a for-profit entity that people can quit if they dislike (if one is an oil-field geologist and dislikes Exxon-Mobil one might get a chance at BP)... but a country? It is difficult to uproot oneself even from Syria today. 

I can hardly see an executive suite as anything other than a haven for pathological narcissists, if not high-functioning sociopaths. Corporate executives are hired to enforce the desires of elites who see working people as livestock at best and vermin at worst -- and serving those interests isn't for people of charity and decency.  Recall Enron Corporation as an extreme example... and then some of the predatory lenders and corrupt rating agencies that foisted an economic disaster that threatened the severity of the three-year meltdown that followed the Crash of 1929. 

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You are right about the desire of the Right for term limits. Term limits have their problems -- most obviously they work as much against a competent and effective legislator as opposed to an incompetent or even corrupt legislator. They ensure a more rapid turnover of politicians -- and give more power to unelected lobbyists responsible only to their paymasters. (Government by lobbyists is a novel form of dictatorship!) They force perhaps a revolving door between government, business, and pressure groups. They can also force politicians with strong aspirations for high office to run for offices for which they need more preparation to do well, which is not good for the political process. A four-term Congressional Representative is, ceteris paribus,  more likely to be a more effective Senator than a two-term Representative. 
 
 The line between legislating and governing isn't so clear as it may seem to you.  Mayors and Governors have become Senators, Representatives have become Governors, and city-councilmen have often become Mayors. Knowing what the People want and being able to achieve it within a legislature is a desirable trait in a mayor, Governor, or President.
 

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...Conservative interests -- like cheap labor and tough law enforcement -- can themselves contradict. Conservatives ordinarily want an abundant supply of cheap, dependent, expendable, but competent labor. Greater profits can be made by underpaying workers because they are in no position in which to say no (don't kid yourself -- that is one of the objectives of "Right-to-Work" legislation). But cheap labor is a hardship for those who have no alternative -- and low wages imply hardships to people (children) who have no culpability in the system.

Note well: in a democracy, everything -- including stewardship of the economy -- is a legitimate concern of the elected leadership. It is not enough to say that efficiency is everything; if that efficiency comes with cruelty then the objectives are suspect.  Workers have a right to concern themselves with issues of economic equity that some conservatives consider outside the realm of public debate and action. If Big Business could get away with it America would quickly revert to the norm of the Gilded Age for industrial workers -- kids in the workforce by age 10, 70 hours as the workweek, workers wrecked by 35 and dead by 40.

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We now get to judge him on his results, and what he was before he was President no longer matters except as description. It would not matter now if the President did as he does after having spent most of his life as a long-haul trucker. We legitimately judge politicians on their results.

[pbrower2a]

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I strongly suspect that the disagreement is rooted in economics. You reject what conservatives believe in economics, which is why you don't understand this point.

I could of course be wrong.

It is the difference between microeconomics (theory of the individual and the firm) and macroeconomic (the theory of the of economy as a whole). What is good for one person (accelerating one's savings during an economic downturn) might be a calamity for humanity as a whole if everyone did it because such would reduce total spending when consumer spending is all that can drive the economy.

[pbrower2a]

I am not a supporter of term limits, never said I was. You once again read to much into something and posted a bunch of crap distracting from the core issues of the topic. I never created any line between legislating and governing. I was assessing the desire of conservatives for a Washington outsider. Since you mix your personal view with your analysis all the time, I am not surprised you assume others do so as well.

We can all state positions including those with which we disagree. Someone said that conservatives tend to support term limits -- which seems true. It is easy for people to impute reasons to contemporary conservatives -- for example, that they want participation in the legislative process to not be a career, that continuance in office allows legislators to go out of tough with the "Real World", that the legislative process inherently corrupts elected officials... to which a liberal might retort that the  "Real World" looks very different between a minority-dominated district in Houston and some largely-rural and predominately white district in the Texas Panhandle and that politicians expected  to represent voters in both districts can reasonably be expected to express political reality very differently, that constituent service becomes potentially better the longer that one holds onto a legislative seat, that lobbyists get better knowledge of how to use the political process to effect change than do politicians, that rapid turnover of legislative offices encourages a revolving door between special interests and government in which being an elected official is just another item on a career as a business executive, and that even without term limits voters can oust elected officials who prove incompetent or corrupt. Maybe it is easier to develop into a reliable 'conservative' stooge for Big Business than it is to develop as a liberal because conservative positions more easily come from a simpler explanation of principles and policies because liberalism implies a more complicated understanding of human nature instead of profit-and-loss. Profit-and-loss isn't everything even for conservatives as persons.     
   

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Did I have to put it so crudely as "I just don't trust the b@stards"? The Movement Conservatives or our time are no longer the likes of Everett Dirksen who recognized that the common man needed to believe that he was getting something from the overall system. To describe them as mirror-image Marxists -- that is, people who believe in the very things that Marx and all later socialists and liberals consider objectionable. Capitalism and the conservatism that largely defends capitalism both need a human face lest capitalism and conservatism become an endorsement of economic cruelty for the enrichment and pampering of elites as the primary objective of business and government.

Conservatism needs to grow up. Material gain and indulgence aren't everything -- which explains why there aren't as many pimps and pushers as a very sordid view of human nature would suggest.       

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The thread is suppose defend longterm incumbents and insiders. That section initially included Lincoln short government experience as well. I removed it to reduce the length. It wasn't meant to be a hit on Obama, but a defense of "alleged" outsiders.
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Insiders are inevitable in any political order irrespective of its ideology whether those people are born to the position (aristocracy),  own the resources and manage the labor (plutocracy), develop and exploit information that they keep to themselves (bureaucracy), develop power over people through fear of horrific consequences for any misstep (tyranny),  or elected (democracy).   Just think of Soviet reality in practice: the revolutionaries ended up going after each other and becoming either enforcers or victims, and real power gravitated to an unelected Party boss for decisions on who lived and who died and to politically-reliable bureaucrats who could enrich themselves by arranging what a free market would otherwise make easy.

...It is a facile enterprise to look to the "intent of the Founders". Without question they saw relatively few people as appropriate holders of political power: officials chosen by the People in periodic and competitive elections, persons appointed by the elected President and subject to Congressional approval, and persons under the employ, as necessary for the execution of appropriate power  but strictly-limited authority and who could be fired for incompetence or misconduct. Innovations in that norm have inherent dangers. Economic interests never got representation (which would be fascism as a political structure) as such. Although much ambiguity remains on what role government has in the economy (so long as it does not steal assets from owners) and in practice the methods of serving people the Founders were quite clear about things that the government could not do -- like torture, summary executions, suppression of press and speech, ex post facto laws and bills of attainder,  sale of offices, and religious discrimination. They also determined an overall pattern of political structure and practice  modified little since -- notably checks and balances on power within the government .

Elected officials were generally understood to have independence from all but their voters and not to be responsible to some Party Boss or to some "Commission of Public Morals" (contemporary Iran), or lobbyists deputized by corporate interests to supervise them in practice. The latter is in the formative stage in America, and that is the formative stage of a new manner of undemocratic government. It is so novel that it has no obvious name for it; one would have to coin a term for "Government by lobbyists and enforcers of economic interests". Maybe in Wisconsin it is already being called "Walker-ism" and in Florida it is being called "Scott-ism".

We still have the means to vote out incompetent, corrupt, irresponsible, or sold-out politicians when they seek re-election. We the People are the ultimate check and balance against executive despotism and a legislature running amok or selling out. If We the People abandon that  responsibility then we are at the mercy of a government that rules us with impunity.