Reply #3: "a great empire and little minds go ill together" [View All]

[Martin Eden]

Excellent article -- thanks for posting. I especially liked these paragraphs:

Four years later hurricane Katrina revealed how slip-shod, mismanaged, uncoordinated, lackadaisical that agency still was. The president took little or no interest. He could not be bothered. This was “government” and he does not believe in government. When in public office, I heard chanted like a mantra, Why can’t we run government like a business? Perhaps only George W. Bush can imagine running a giant corporation like he tries to run the government of the world’s greatest super-power. It would soon be on the verge of bankruptcy, its customers would have fled, its management would be in chaos, and any board of directors worth its salt would have fired him. Does he really want to be held to serious business standards? As Edmund Burke had it, “a great empire and little minds go ill together.”

The columnist David Brooks recently asked how “a comprehensive governmental failure is going to restore America’s faith in big government.” It shouldn’t. But it should now cause Americans to wake up to the difference between ineffective and effective government and the consequence of electing a “leader” who not only doesn’t believe in government, he doesn’t believe in governance. To judge the effectiveness of government by the performance of the most incompetent president in modern times is a shabby refuge for discredited conservatism.