FIRST, DO NO HARM :

Aloofness Puts Bush on Right Side of History (James P. Pinkerton, August 15 2002, LA Times)

What did you think of President Bush's Waco economic forum? The media didn't think much of it. All day Tuesday, CNBC anchors could barely report on
the event without smirking. Just hours after it ended, Slate.com's headline gibed, "Fake Forum." The next day, the Washington Post's "analysis" was headlined this way: "A Sunny Thing Happened at the Bush Forum / Tough Economic Issues Get Little Attention."

The overall gist of the reportage is that Bush is so detached from ordinary Americans that his reelection-minded advisors felt they needed to stage a show to fool people into thinking he really does care.

But maybe detachment is not so bad. Maybe it's what we need.

History proves that leaders who kept their eyes on the fundamentals of economic growth did a lot better than those who tried to micromanage every problem. [...]

The success of the economy depends on the noninterference of politicians. That was the great insight of 18th century French economists, who saw that kings and queens weren't helping by meddling.

So they came up with the economic equivalent of sang-froid, which is laissez faire, or "let people do as they choose." And two centuries of economic history proves that the cool detachment of the state--leaving people the space to figure things out for themselves--is superior to warm-and-fuzzy intervening.

Well, one pundit got it. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 18, 2002 10:30 AM