Subtitle: Why we need a Small Business Owner in the White House
Calling Wayne Root a credible business owner is like thinking Eddie Haskel was a credible altar boy. They each might able to pull it off with gullible voters or Mrs. Cleaver, but the rest of us are just laughing. Setting aside the dubious nature of what Root refers to as his business, the hilarity of his approach is certainly not something done on a conscious basis. The author becomes so enamored with his own self, experience and illusions of grander, as to make Lyndon Larouche seem almost credible in so much as his followers actually take to the streets with his message. It's never clear how Root will mobolize the disparate legions of small business heroes.
A perfect example (p.98):
"I believe that my life has been the perfect preparation for running the greatest economy in the world."
This statement alone belies a great ignorance about economies and prepares a good libertarians defense to any future candidacy. You see by this statement alone, Root has become just like his anti-self Obama, in so much as he figures it may actually be the job of the President of the United States to run the economy. Nothing could be farther from the truth and any which way that Root twists it afterwards is meaningless when placed in stark contrast to such a simplistic sentence, which was actually published. Any meaning or purpose in the chapter is rendered inert and useless from a libertarian perspective whether you are the most ardent of Austrians or just one of those milquetoast moderates who get their panties in a bunch about their credible minarchy.
" In a small business it's just the owner. The weight of the world is on my shoulders."
Suddenly the sympathy routine. Last chapter was the glory and wonder of Nevada compared to the rest of us suckers in New York or California and now old Wayne is worrying about how to pay the bills because big bad Obama is coming. The first candidate with the same worries . . . yadda, yadda.
He goes on to describe the other major party candidates as non-small business owners and fails to give credit to Ron Paul's medical practice. Blind spot after blind spot for someone looking to impress the very people he is trying to connect with. Minor oversight perhaps. Brilliant ? Never.
"But remember - I have no intention of running the government. I aim only to cut government. (p.101)" A couple pages ago he was running the whole damn economy. It might be something to cut budgets when your the guy who owns everything, but once you enter the shark infested waters of Washington that's no longer the game dude. Geeesh. I mean great, you never asked for a bailout from the government or took a dime of welfare. Government belongs to the people, instead of being the most illegitimate human construct ever. Your money is your property, instead of being an imaginary note whose control is dubious at best. The only thing that 'qualifies' anybody for the Presidency is a horde of unreasonable expectation, not a scamdicapper hawking a bad book.
"Let's compare me with President Obama (p.104)"
Why Wayne ? Because you both graduated from Columbia in 1983 ? Because he has the atention of the world and you want it even more ? Because doing so actually contributes to some perverse sensibility of conservative hope ? Why ? When you say Obama fights privatization of Social Security tooth and nail, does that mean you're into forcing it into private hands ?
Comparing the virtues of small buisness to the business of governing is a joke. It really is. No matter how you slice it, your butcher dad would have been even more clueless than Harry Truman when he found out FDR just croaked. Power at the level we see and experience it in this country is a vast cesspool of liars, poseurs, frauds and cheap imitations of real human beings. Somehow I think you'd fit in just fine.
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