I am Lyndon Bellerophon Johnson. Meet my horse.


(photo courtesy tomtech)

Let's get something straight:

Democrats suck. They only throw money at problems. They don't understand business. They don't understand the value of hard work. They have no Core values. They resort to social engineering. Liberals naievely believe in big government. They are naive, period. They don't care about the consequences of their actions. They want to take your freedoms away. They don't know the meaning of the word "responsibility." They think they know better. They think you can't add. They are bad people. Period.

There, the Chimera is named. I feel better. On with the post...

"Brand is shorthand for the result of an exploration that many leaders ignore because it's not wholly spreadsheetable. Advertising is what they then misspend on wildly when their innattention bleeds all over their printouts and people are buffing resumes and mapping out escape routes..."

I said that to a business group a few years back in a talk about the dangers of thinking of brand and marketing as a thing apart from leadership.

The payoff of the above quote: "Barring a very large and counter-intuitive saving gesture on your part--counter-intuitive, because you've already acted exactly as the stereotype would have you behave--those people, employees and customer, will leave anyway no matter what you spend. Because you've given them no reason to stay, and every reason to doubt. You have already let them go."

Thursday night, George Bush repeated the same mistake that CEOs have the world over... Frugality and metrics are the watchword; we sensually fetishize our "bottom-line seriousness." Until the big anvil falls from the sky. Then, suddenly, the boss experiences a moment self-preservational clarity. And she goes to the only arrow she knows how to shoot: Money. Money as spackle, money as ointment and anaesthetic, money as apology, money as a last best hope.

We're all fond of saying time is money. It's not. Money is much cheaper than time. At least, you'd be forgiven for assuming so considering how difficult it is to get leaders to step off their favorite merry-go-rounds of narrowly self-defined purpose. And maybe that merry-go-round analogy is the perfect one. Culturally, the CEO as Courageous Knight is a media-created fiction that does a disservice to the humans elected to play that role. It pushes them into isolation. It forces them, not their horse, to be the one wearing blinders in the name of focus and EBITDA. Or, in the name of (impossible) ideological purity. Some buy into it and gladly climb on their wooden horses and, when the real struggle presents itself, wonder why they are ill prepared for battle after all the "saddle time" they've gained.

When the realization hits us that reality ain't what we thought it was, we're dumbfounded and mad and alone. Ill-equipped, except for our checkbook.

And so, the "money we don't have" is found, with sufficient motivation, with those anvils inbound or raining around us. But don't get too excited. The epiphany is a cardboard conversion. World views haven't changed. Error is not so much accepted and learned from as it is buffed and sanded of it's sharp, gauche edges that, like neon arrows, are pointing at us. Yeah. Sudden increases in spending for this neglected area or that are Hallmark Cards we send our bruised egos: See! I care! Look at all the money we've allocated to X! Proof, see?!

But it's often--usually, in fact--too late. The wrong currency. You've become that chimerical Democrat you warned us about: You're there in person, but not in spirit. You brought your checkbook. But your heart isn't in it. You were all wooden horse, no cattle. And no competent, capable cowhands. A virtual rancher.

Max Sawicky:

THE ERA OF LIMITED GOVERNMENT IS OVER

But you knew that. There are also the startling remarks (via Tapped) from Felon-to-be Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX).

I agreed with everything Bush said last night, until he got to his specifics -- enterprise zones, worker accounts, and homesteading. These are a small part of the total spending in store. The EZ cost would not be counted as an outlay and is totally outside the sixty-something billion.

On its face, absent the few policy bon-bons to the conservative wonkocracy, this was a thoroughly liberal Democratic speech. Don't think that Dems would not have their own feast of tax incentives (sic) for economic development. Naturally, rhetoric aside, how all the money gets spent is an entirely different matter.

The speech was so Democratic, in fact, that the conservative bits were discordant. The bit about entrepreneurs, for instance. What kind of entrepreneurship depends on tax subsidies? With subsidies, I could be an entrepreneur. A subsidy to entrepreneurship means the government finances a business that can't turn a market rate of profit. It's paying someone to lose money. Hey, I could do that. Mr. President, over here!

If the city is cleaned up, its infrastructure restored, and flood protection established, there should be no need for subsidies to make business development flourish. On the other hand, individuals will need compensation to get on their feet again, including access to credit for business start-ups. Such access would not be a subsidy if it plugged preexisting holes in the market -- the sort of red-lining that prevents solvent, lower-income people, especially minorities, from getting the loans they need and can repay to buy housing and start businesses.

The homesteading thing is interesting, harkening to old populist notions. I take Steve Kyle's point in the comments to the previous post of the danger that such support would be steered to the finance of gentrified neighborhoods that are inhospitable to the former inhabitants. Like the vast bulk of the money set aside, it is really a black box. How it gets done and how worthwhile remain to be determined.

At the same time, for the port and tourism industries to be revived, you need workers who have to live somewhere. The real victims of displacement are more likely to be those with loose or no attachment to the workforce, as well as the indigent elderly and infirm.

For the skinny on the worker accounts, these are merely an old proposal from the Bushists, dressed up for the latest excuse. Here's the skinny, here too.

However messy the use of money becomes in the hands of the Bushists, I maintain that this is a watershed moment for the limited-government movement. What we have in this Administration is an unwholesome mixture -- the term toxic soup comes to mind -- of Christian fundy prejudice (towards non-Christians, science, and the Enlightenment), Wilsonian jingoism, and blind anti-tax sentiment. Big, stupid government is all over your bedroom and your public schools, driving your kids further into debt, rattling an insubstantial sabre at a legion of emboldened international miscreants. These people will be the death of us all.

Yes, but the marketing will be shiny.