Derb Admits He's Bored With Election

The federal government makes such a mess of everything that there’s not much any of the candidates can do.  And they are good candidates. Writes John Derbyshire:

I even like some of these guys. War hero... confident and successful businessman/governor... tough no-nonsense mayor... laid-back, witty showbiz type with good conservative creds... There’s plenty to like, almost an embarrassment of riches.

Leave aside the mess in housing, the declining dollar, the mess in Iraq.  There’s immigration.  What can a president do about that?

I think we’ve arrived at a point where the president may propose, but the courts, the federal bureaucracy, the interest groups, the lobbies and trial lawyers, and the ACLU, and CAIR, and MEChA, and LULAC dispose.

So what’s the point?  Better wait until things get really screwed up.

I may be bored, like Derb, but I’m not idle.

Right now, I’m loading up data on state and local government spending into my usgovernmentspending.com site. As the billions roll by, year after year, you ask: What are these people doing with all that money?  It's just wasted, isn't it?  Every last billion.  It's all about government doing what people could be, should be doing for themselves.

And there's another thing. This is a democracy, and the way democracy works is that the other chaps get to have a go.  Especially when the other chaps are mad as hell.  So it's time for the Democrats to get back to the White House.

in the bigger picture we are playing out the string on the welfare state right now. We know, from the Reagan era, that the Democrats are not ready to talk about reform yet.  We need another decade of welfare state ineptitude and waste and self-dealing to play out before we conservatives will get the chance for another wave of reform.

It's happening in Britland right now.  Ten years ago, the Labour Party was elected on the theme of "education, education, education."  What do you think has happened?  Britain has dropped in the OECD league tables, according to the Daily Telegraph.

In reading 15-year-olds in the UK dropped from seventh in 2000 to 17th... In maths, pupils fell from eighth to 24th... In science, secondary school students in the UK dropped from fourth to 14th.

And so, wonder of wonders, the Conservative Party is rising in the polls, and leader David Cameron is starting to look like a man who could be Prime Minister.

The point is that there is a flow in the tide of events, and the best thing is to be ready when the tide is flowing in your favor.

When the tide is ebbing, it’s best to anchor and wait for the tide to turn.