I can't change the Laws of Economics Captain...

Why does the right like Sarah Palin?  That's the question I get most.  The answer is that she knows she's not smart enough to fix every problem.  Let's face it, people who run government are really really smart.  Obama's smart; Cheney is smart.  As much as you hate to admit it, George W. Bush is really smart.  (Al Gore, not so much.)    And the minions around them who actually run Government?  VERY smart.  Janet Napolitano, Robert McNamara, Karl Rove...very smart people indeed.  Of course, none of them are as smart as Jimmy Carter.

The problem with smart people is that Government seduces them.  After all, if you are smart and have a lot of power, you can use your power to make life better for people. 

Unfortunately, beyond a certain basic level, that doesn't work.  The world is simply too complex, and no matter how hard you try, how smart you are and how much power you exert, you can only change the laws of economics for so long.  Then everything falls apart.

So if you think that poor people should buy homes but they can't afford them, then maybe you can create the Community Reinvestment Act...and if banks still won't lend you can create Freddie and Fannie to back up all those loans. 

Here's an article in today's Wall St. Journal about farm programs in India that, in addition to costing billions of dollars, have actually REDUCED crop yields. 

Of course, Government doesn't have a monopoly on bad ideas. Government can simply do them on such a large scale that it really screws up people's lives.  

Oh, and what happens to bad ideas in the market place?  They go away. That's why you don't drive an Edsel or a Pinto.

Actualy, in the market place, even good ideas run their course and go away...that's why you don't go to the drive in movies, rent from Hollywood Video, or have a newspaper on your drive way.  Ok, I guess there's still one drive in theater in Tempe, and I think there's a Hollywood Video in Avondale and I'm sure someone in Sun City get his news exclusively from the Republic. 

Government programs never go away...that's why we still have farm subsidies and Head Start.  Those programs don't work, but at least they are expensive.

You may think that smart people using government to really screw things up is a Democratic phenomenon--and you can be excused for thinking that.  After all, Lyndon Johnson wanted Guns and Butter and botched them both.  The war on poverty did as much damage as the war in Vietnam.  But really smart Republicans botch things too;  it was Richard Nixon who established wage and price controls and George W. Bush who imposed steel tariffs. 

Both parties botch things up in the name of "economic development."  When I served in the Legislature, the hot economic development idea was call centers--seriously. Then it was stadiums.  Golly, Detroit has three major sports teams and seems to have invested  a lot of time, money and intellect into improving the local economy.  I wonder how that's going. 

Meanwhile, back in Arizona the new Civic Center can't make its debt payments; The Tourism Sports Authority is hanging on my its finger nails; Glendale is headed towards bankruptcy; TGEN brings in some grant money, but no real jobs and now legislators are talking about "targeted" tax breaks and something called the "Discovery Triangle."  Whatever. 

Of course, in a democracy, really smart people who want to make the world a better place can't do much more than wreck the economy.  Combine brains, utopian vision and REAL power and you can manage to wreck the economy and exterminate 100 million people. 

So why does the right like Palin?  Palin isn't as smart as Obama, Cheney, Carter or either Bush.  She's like Reagan but better looking.  That means she's unlikely to nationalize health care, fix wages and prices, or impose tariffs on the steel industry.  The right is looking for someone who knows she's not smart enough to change the laws of economics.  Maybe that's Palin, maybe it's not. 

It was William F. Buckley who famosly remarked that he would rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people in the Boston phone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.  I couldn't agree more. 

Palin is a corollary to the Buckley rule--better to have a leader with good instincts who doesn't think she can fix all your problems than a guy with an IQ of 150 surrounded by Ph.Ds who will mess up your life--and if she knows how to shoot a moose, all the better.  

The second most common question that I get about Palin, is "Why does the left hate her so much?"  I'll let the other bloggers answer that one.

Comments

[RonJ]

The Whole Truth: First, do not confuse "typos" with "misspellings" or "fatfingering". Second, the Republican Party does not reject education (you sound like a Democrat, or at best a moderate Republican). Republicans--Conservatives in particular--love and embrace education. We just don't want it controlled by the left who re-write our history, give more credence to "diversity" than to true science, care more about handing out condoms than teaching basic math, and work harder at protecting teacher and administrator pay than truly educating our kids. Oblivion occurs when ill-conceived ideas take root and control a party (see the Democrats with Obama at the head).

[Jack O]

What I look for in a leader is common sense, and I think that's Palin's appeal.

I've met some incredibly intelligent people that are incredibly stupid when it comes to solving simple problems. I have no doubt that if Jimmy Carter and Sarah Palin took an IQ test, Carter would come out on top, but that doesn't mean Jimmy Carter would make a better President.

That being said, I consider myself to be a conservative that doesn't want a Palin-run for the White House, even though I think her criticisms are completely unfair. To put it simply, I think she'd lose and I see Democrats licking their chops.

The only way I see a vulnerable and increasingly unpopular Obama getting reelected is if enough Republicans decide they want to stick a cultural middle-finger up by nominating a candidate like Palin or Huckabee.

[Thane Eichenauer]

Your post about smart people and their inability to use government to make the world better reminds me of the following quote:

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

F A Hayek
The Fatal Conceit

http://EconStories.tv/
(It has a great music video on economics)

[Simon says:]

Glendale has a drive-in as well. It is a lot cheaper to take the kids there than the indoor theatre.

[George]

Scottsdale has a drive-in, too.

[B.N.]

Best post I've read in a long time! You hit the nail on the head with this one.

[ron]

"Government seduces them."

No, its not government that seduces them; it is the trappings of power that seduce them. Many years ago, a congressman observed that it was hard to remember what life was like in the town he came from when because when he was in Washington everyone stood up when he walked into a room, when the elevator operator always greeted him with a smile and a "Good Morning, Congressman _______", when the press was hanging on his every word. He said he was going to not run for the next election because he had lost the memory of what it was to be a citizen and congress should be comprised of citizens.

[Rutabaga]

Personally, I love Sarah Palin because she's smart enough to have government health care for her grandson Tripp. But insist that government health care for the rest of America would be a horror complete with death panels. She's unlikely to nationalize healthcare. She'll just have her family on government health care.

Palin infuriates the left because they're unable to fathom why anyone would take this woman seriously.

[David Cantelme]

You don't have to be a brain to figure out there are different ways of being smart -- "multiple intelligences" as the academics like to say. For example, being gifted as a writer or speaker doesn't necessarily make you good with numbers, though some talented people are good at both. We've all known people who were whip smart but had poor judgment or were awkward around people. Judgment and character are probably the most important for public leaders. To illustrate, who was the better president, high-school-graduate Truman or Rhodes-scholar Clinton?

[North Valley Republican]

Mr. Cantelme is correct. As a former school board member, he was in a position to see the arrogance of educators who got power. It took him nearly two years to wrestle that power away from the maniac that was running the school district. Unfortunately, the problems of "educated" people in positions of power remains very strong in school districts where the citizens do not remain alert to issues surrounding the big fish in small ponds. I guess it's all a matter of scale (no pun intended).

[Julie]

The reason people like Sarah Palin is because she is real. Real and fearless. They probably are the same thing in the end.
She not only stood up to the establishment in general, she stood up to the powerful in her own party.

She has done what her book suggests: She's gone rogue - and continues to do it.

So many conservatives and independents are under the thumb of oppressive government, they cannot truly be either conservative or independent. We look now and see a person who came out from the oppression, from the go-along-to-get-along, and we see hope for ourselves – in ourselves.

Palin is not a powerful, privileged man, the kind that usually has the power and position to resist these things or the resources to go around them. She is a woman, with small children, outside the traditional seat of power and she stood up and then stood up again and continues to stand against a very oppressive system of government and thought.

She didn’t bow down to the good ol’ boy network, the small town gossips, the elite circles of privilege or the megaphone of the main stream media. All of the things so many do, at some point, relent and follow along or submit to.

She is the hope, not that we can follow a powerful leader (see Obama), but that we can stand up ourselves. If she can do it, we can do it.

This is what we admire. It's not a mystery, it's just that it's rare.

[Brian Carson]

"people who run government are really really smart"
Are you kidding? People succeed in politics because they're popular. Even idiots have fans!