So you can see why I had a problem with George Will on ABC's This Week:
Steve Benen points out the problem:
As the columnist sees it, the president said the government could solve problems. And since it hasn't yet solved this problem, the disaster "just strikes at the narrative of competence."
I continue to be mystified by this. Blaming the president is unfair, Will conceded, because the president is doing all he can under impossible circumstances. But blaming the president is worthwhile, Will added in the next breath, because we now know government officials can't quickly shut down a gushing oil leak a mile below sea level.
If we were to take Will's point to the next step -- the federal government lacks the wherewithal to fix every problem, so some tasks should be left in the hands of private enterprise and the states -- I suppose the lesson is we should have BP and Louisiana state agencies solve the problem.
That ought to work, right?
The alternative to "big government" is big business -- the private sector. How can George Will possibly walk away from this thinking the lesson to be learned is that the private sector is more competent than government? At every step, BP has done the wrong thing. I don't know about you, but I'm still waiting for the Invisible Hand of the Market to jam its Divine Finger into that leak and solve this whole thing. It may be that at no point in my life has the argument that private industry corners the market on innovation and solutions been so thoroughly shown to be absolute horseshit.
I often find myself wondering how in the hell George Will ever got a reputation as a brainiac -- and never more than now.
