Harold Ford's Not Ready For Prime Time Either
Two weeks ago I said that an opinion piece by Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty showed that he wasn't ready for prime time as far as the federal budget was concerned.
Yesterday, in a piece for the New York Times, former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford, who supposedly is considering a run for Senate in New York, embarrassed himself as much as Pawlenty did with a combination of proposals that would only work in a parallel universe where mathematic consistency isn't required.
Mark Thoma's take on the Ford op-ed is well-worth a few minutes of your time.
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Aw, come on...
You might as well have crticized a year-and-a-half ago:
"Barack Obama has embarrassed himself, is revealed to be not ready for prime time, by running around the country repeatedly promising that his health care reform will be negotiated on C-SPAN. No legislation is negotiated on TV, and only a naif would believe differently..."
And of course Obama knew his promise was bogus, but that's what politicians do. They take polls and say whatever they have to say to get elected. Truth is not a constraint.
They must! Otherwise they won't get elected. Then what good can they do for the country? None.
So what do we do?
We criticize them for it only if we don't want them to get elected. If we do want them to get elected then we are silent about their obvious mendacity, or critcize those who call them on it -- or actually praise them for their "expedient shrewdness on behalf of the public good".
That's what we do.
Take FDR. Who criticizes him for running in 1932 on a platform promising to balance the budget by cutting waste from government? Nobody, because we like that he won.
Hey, what's worse than a politician lying to the whole country to deviosuly mislead it into a major war?? That's certainly worth damnation if anyting is, is it not?
FDR's 1940 campaign mantra: "I have said this before, but I will say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent to any foreign wars." -- even as he already had the navy fighting an undeclared war against the Germans in the Atlantic, and was looking for a provocation to expand it.
But since we approve that war, we give such deceit the highest praise!
"Roosevelt's greatest contribution came in his using all his devious sneakiness as a ruthless political intriguer to put the United States in harm's way in World War II." -- Brad DeLong
That's what we do.
Ford's no more unready for prime time than the other guys. He's being entirely professional and carefully calculated, just like they were.
Have you been following any of the things his unelected, appointed, down-in-the-polls Democratic alternative Gillebrand has been saying?
Take a look there, and -- if your objective is to keep this Senate seat for the Democrats -- you may well, as with Obama and FDR, begin to appreciate the intelligent expedient shrewdness Ford is demonstrating.