Politics isn't neurosurgery. . .and that's the problem

By A.J. DiCintio

After the remarkably talented and accomplished Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, the WSJ permitted itself a bit of political giddiness by shouting, "Ben Carson for President."

And why not that indulgence, for Carson's refreshing comments regarding healthcare and taxes invite further innovative ideas based upon the traditional American ethos that agrees with his depiction of freedom as "an elusive bird, constantly on the move, progressively distancing itself from complacency."

The problem for Dr. Carson and other like-minded citizens, however, is that the kind of creative, fact-and-principle-based thinking that drives change in professions from architecture to neurosurgery to zoology is anathema to politicians.

For evidence with respect to Democrats, we need only look beyond the illusory ideas for change the president obsessively mixes up by dumping buckets of glittering generalities into vats brimming with political expediency to discover that the real Barack Obama is a true-believing ideologue devoted to the failed, decrepit concept that since "the nanny state is the good state," any policy that increases the size, scope, and power of the central government is good policy.

Although the worlds of academia, entertainment, and the elite media labor incessantly to convince us otherwise, the president's worship of leftist dogma produces not the triumph of reason but an irrationality so profound it keeps his liberal mind tightly shut against any historical fact or contemporary reality that threatens its real religion.

For instance, not once has President Obama soberly addressed the public about the major lesson to be learned from the horrendous problems afflicting Europe's largest "social democracies," specifically, that those nations – in Margaret Thatcher's intellectually honest Plain English – have "run out of other people's money."

Instead, he continues headlong in his belief that our country will achieve real, lasting prosperity if it adheres to the same arrogantly rapacious, myriad-tentacled ideology that has strangled the life out of Europe's spirit while dooming its youth to the hell where every lost generation dwells.

Of course, this is the same Obama who, in one of the most irresponsible and insulting acts ever committed by an American president, summarily dismissed the debt commission he himself appointed.

The same Obama who thinks it no big deal that for four years running, the Democratically controlled Senate has failed to pass not just one of his budgets but any budget.

And the same Obama who not only lied a trillion dollar lie about the cost of his "Affordable" Care Act but also passed the plan off as an honest, innovative transformation of the healthcare industry when the truth defines it as a reform-ignoring, government expanding monstrosity based upon the failed Great Society welfare model.

Mention of healthcare reminds us that Establishment Republicans are as devoid of truthful, creative thinking as their opponents; for in totally neglecting the problems afflicting an industry that today consumes 17% of GDP and will consume a mad 20% in just another eight years, a truly sick Republican complacency played a major role in creating the environment that allowed "Obamacare" not just to pass but survive the Election of 2012.

With respect to economic policy, that Establishment has again been as stagnant, corrupt, and oblivious of reality as Democrats.

For proof, consider that however unfair, inaccurate, and ironic his claims about saving GM and Chrysler, Obama was able to win the votes of millions of swing state independents and "Reagan Democrats" and thus the election.

Not, mind you, because those voters were uninformed but precisely the opposite.

For instance, they knew all too well that the $80 billion auto bailout was dwarfed by its $600 billion TARP counterpart, which permitted shockingly irresponsible banks, even foreign banks, to have their gambling debts paid off at 100 cents on the dollar.

They also knew that TARP's $600 billion is itself dwarfed by the Fed's Zero Interest Rate Policy, a three trillion dollar contrivance concocted exclusively to. . .

1) directly replenish the vaults of the big banks

2) increase the price of big bank shares (sure enough, "financials" were the biggest stock market winners in 2012)

3) send equities and commodities markets roaring, thereby creating more opportunities for big bank trading ("gambling") departments to make good use of a policy that just about literally gives banks "money for nothing."

Finally, those voters knew and still know that having rubber-stamped TARP, Establishment Republicans have opposed common sense reforms of the banking industry, reforms that have the support not just of small business and other Main Street conservatives but distinguished conservative bankers such as former Kansas City Fed Chairman Thomas Hoenig.

Unfortunately, banking doesn't represent the only crucially important issue in which Establishment Republican minds are closed and corrupt, a reality revealed by the following rhetorical question:

Is it possible to name an Establishment Republican who is famous for arguing that "free" trade, outsourcing manufacturing jobs, and importing cheap goods benefit the American people and equally well-known for conducting serious discussions with the public about the fact (see Federal Reserve System data) that since 1970, wages as a percent of GDP have been in a relentless decline?

Sadly, with respect to both major parties, there are many more examples to be advanced in support of the notion that there is something rotten in the state of current political thinking.

Whether that "sadly" is replaced by "tragically" will depend upon whether We the People demand that, adhering to the principles bequeathed to us by the Founders, our politicians bring much more of Dr. Carson's neurosurgical attitude to their practices.

© A.J. DiCintio