A Quick Note To Betty Blue and Rudy Red

by BILL WADDELL

I ranted a bit yesterday on the state of the economy, pointing out that the credit disaster had been building for the "last few decades".  For those whose history is a bit rusty, a 'few decades' is about 20 years and spans the administrations of Bushes 1 & 2, with 8 years of Clinton in between.  It also spans a number of sees and saws over which party controlled the House and the Senate.  I was pretty well staking the position that the mess was a very collaborative effort of all of our leaders.  I did not discriminate of the basis of party or which lobby had been the highest bidder for a politician's particular vote.

That said, I raised a literary eyebrow at Bush 2's frequent boasts of increased home-ownership on his watch. And that rubbed someone who hides behind the alias of Betty Blue the wrong way.  She lowered the boom and put me on notice that, despite agreeing with everything I had written, she simply would not abide by such criticism of Mr. Bush and would no longer consider my opinions.

Betty, you're missing out on all the fun.

The good Lord has mercifully balanced the 45% of the population who check their brains at the door and swallow whole everything FOX News and Rush Limbaugh offer up, with an equal number of folks who have fallen for the scam that CNN is a news organization, rather than the PR wing of the Democratic Party, and that Michael Moore is meaningful.Thank goodness for the country that they cancel each other out come election time and the remaining 10% of us who think for ourselves get to have a little influence.

You can be a binary thinker if you want, and believe that you must either be Republican or Democrat and , as a result go along with everything the party of your choice spews; or that economics and business require you to side with either Capital or Labor; or that if you live in in my part of the world you must be a fan of either the Cubs or the White Sox.  Life is more complicated than that, and much more interesting.  A criticism of Bush is not an endorsement of Obama; a criticism of Wall Street does not make me a member of the UAW; enjoying a summer afternoon at Wrigley Field does not make me a Sox hater.

You might want to consider the notion that sometimes the correct answer comes from the right and sometimes from the left; and more often from neither.  You might want to consider the notion that the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac problems are more symptoms than causes and that there are some cultural problems underlying the credit issue that go back a long, long way.

You might even want to consider the idea that there is not nearly as much difference as FOX and CNN lead you to believe between one prep school, Ivy League President (Bush) and another (Obama).  Both certainly seem to have the ability to spend money like sailors on shore leave with little regard for the future.  Neither is particularly easy to defend.

Go ahead and tune me out if you please.  You will be in very, very good company if you do.  However, I suspect you know better than to think the blame for the whole of our economic fiasco can be laid at the feet of Democrats who supported equal housing.  That would mean that all of the problems would go away if we just got rid of the Democrats, wouldn't it?  Like when the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate and the White House for much of the Bush years? 

The great thing about Evolving Excellence – both the writers and the readers – is that they are almost all folks who think for themselves.  If they were folks that accepted the status quo, and believed that what always was must always be, they would not be the leading lean thinkers they are.