Posted by
Andrews on Monday, July 20, 2009 6:36:24 PM
One of the most telling quotes ever appeared
in a WSJ opinon piece. Here it is:
On Capitol Hill, delay favors the opposition and tends to lead to defeat.
Think about the meaning of that. The more a bill is examined, the more likely it is to fail.
Should we really be passing bills based solely upon being given too little time to examine them? Does ti fill anyone with confidence that the only reason laws pass is because no one has adequately thought things through?
If a bill fails because it has been "dissected " and examined too much, that means that there are enough legitimate complaints with a bill to convince a majority. In other words, it is not being "dissected", it is revealing its true colors. Only a professional political writer could find that a bad thing. For the rest of us, it suggests not that bills should be passed quickly, but more likely that we never should pass most of the bills we do.
Why is it that politicians and the chattering class around them so often seem to see things in such counter-intuitive, even alien, ways?