DISORGANIZING GENIUS:

Dean: Opting Out . . . (George Will, 11/13/03, Jewish World Review)

On May 24, 1945, just 16 days after V-E Day, Britain's socialists were sanguine. A Labor Party firebrand, Aneurin Bevan, anticipating the Labor victory that occurred five weeks later, said that privation would be a thing of the past, because essentials would soon be abundant: "This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time."

But socialism rose to the challenge. Two years later, the coal industry having been nationalized and food still rationed, coal and fish were scarce. There are indeed some things that only government can do.

Which brings us to Howard Dean's decision, made after an East German-style plebiscite among his faithful, to forgo government funding of his campaign for the Democratic nomination, thereby escaping spending limits. He will rely on the voluntary contributions of people who agree with him. What a concept.

Dean's sensible and entirely self-interested decision means he knows he can get more money on his own than he can from the government. He has discovered the obvious: The government, by its restrictions on the amounts and conduits of political giving, has turned something that exists in wild abundance in America — money — into a scarcity (as the postwar Labor government did with coal and fish).

That is exquisite.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 17, 2003 1:31 PM