Them's Fightin' Words

Arnold Kling writes:

Actor	The Promise	The Reality
Financial Executives	Brilliant Risk Management	Catastrophic Losses
Eliot Spitzer	Mr. Clean, Financial Reformer	Celebrity Prosecutions, Real Abuses Untouched, and Not So Clean
Sarbanes-Oxley	Financial Responsibility	Large Costs, No Apparent Benefits
Basel Capital Standards	International Coordination, Sound Banks	Worldwide Banking Collapse
Fannie, Freddie	Stable Mortgage Credit	Fed the Boom, Stuck Taxpayers with the Bust
TARP	Unclog the Financial System	Zombie Banks
Big Fiscal Stimulus	Put the Economy on a Better Path	Wait and See

The pattern is big egos, big money, and big power offering big promises, getting big media play, and making big mistakes (Spitzer's mistakes were relatively small, to be honest). To me, the fiscal stimulus represents yet another redistribution of power away from ordinary people and toward the elite, when already the imbalance is too high. I am more worried about rot at the top of society than at the bottom.

Wow!  Angry, cranky... and probably right on.  I see the seeds of a new Reaganism in Kilng's attitude, a new anti-Big Government, anti-arrogant elites, anti-Big Business if and only if it begs/gets government money.  The GOP should distill this, spread it, sloganize it, run with it, and it could bring them to power in 2010 and beyond, and with the kind of mandate they like.  People are mad at the bailouts.  That anger is a political resource.

GOP types might be put off because it comes from a "libertarian."  Libertarians have a lot of right ideas, but unfortunately they hold them in an unhealthy way: they're adherents of a gnostic political theology, and sneer at ordinary people who just want to protect the good life from government messing things up.  In recent years, they've actively supported government expansion, by voting Democrat and reducing Bush's margin and hence weakening his mandate, then by helping elect Obama.  McCain was actually taking a principled and risky stand against "spreading the wealth," but it was no use: libertarians are too in love with their own bitter posing even to think of being team players and giving credit where it's due.  Libertarians are a bit like people who complain loudly about litter while throwing their Coke bottles and plastic bags on the ground.  I guess I'd still consider myself both Republican and libertarian, but I'm proud of the first label, and sort of ashamed of the second.

But Kling is different.  He's ideological-- that term is in need of rehabilitation-- but not a gnostic.  No paranoid Lenin-style anti-imperialism in foreign policy.  He's hard-headed and smart.  And now he's angry.