16 Nov 2004 Sparse Matrix: Bush’s Second Term

David at The Sparse Matrix does me the honor of linking to and discussing a recent column I wrote (available on our website in the form of a short paper).

The column was part of a debate Knight-Ridder published on November 3 — they asked one liberal and one conservative to each write a 650-word op-ed on what the President should do over the next four years. The pieces were marketed as a set.

I was the conservative, Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research was the liberal.

The piece was a bit bit tricky to write, not least because it was due noon the day after the election, and thus had to be written while votes were being tallied. (I decided to take a chance and write it as if Bush would win.) It also was tricky because it is impossible to describe every important issue a President should cover over four years using just 650 words or less.

I covered the war and economic prosperity, because you just have to. Then I tossed in Social Security, health care/Medicare, taming the federal regulatory monster (or, at the very least, reducing its growth), and legal reform.

David at the Sparse Matrix believes I should have added two more. I think he’s right about the first issue he raised. The second issue was new to me. I’d heard of private space exploration, of course, but I had no idea that anyone among the feds wanted to squash it like a bug. Sometimes I suspect government sees its role as crushing every ounce of spirit humanity has (excepting that related to laviscious artwork and banal thoughts on public broadcasting). I hope David will continue to cover this issue in his blog, as I’d hate to see the federal government stop private space exploration.

My piece generated a lot of really vicious hate mail. I didn’t even bother having it posted in our hate mail samples file. A lot of it was worse than what’s in the sample file, even after I responded politely just to see if the sender would get a little bit abashed when he realized a real person was on the other end of his venting. You wouldn’t believe the nasty things that were said. Even the critics who didn’t call me names said I was a liar (people who disagree with my point of view on Social Security seemed particularly likely to dismiss the entire issue by screaming “liar! liar!.”

People also were upset because some of the newspapers ran the piece under a headline saying Bush had a mandate. I didn’t write the headlines and didn’t address the mandate issue, but I got both barrels for it anyway.

I mention all this as one more bit of evidence that the left really has lost its mind since November 2. My piece was, after all, published as part of a tandem with a liberal author (copies of Mark Weisbrot’s piece can be found in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, the Cincinnati Enquirer, or his organizations’s website, among other places) who was pretty critical of Bush and the right, so it isn’t as if both sides weren’t represented.

So, anyway, I enjoyed reading the Sparse Matrix’s take, especially as my morals and my intelligence weren’t slammed even once in the entire piece. Refreshing!