Professionals and amateurs?
A UK business magazine describes people who know and can articulate clearly their interests (and is it true that the open microphone was a “blunder,” or was it, rather, a warning?):
Prince Saud Al-Faisal was overheard ruling out a proposal from Iran and Venezuela to discuss pricing crude in a private meeting at the oil cartel’s conference. In an embarrassing blunder at the meeting in Riyadh, ministers’ microphones were not cut off during a key closed meeting, and Prince Al-Faisal was heard saying: “My feeling is that the mere mention that the Opec countries are studying the issue of the dollar is itself going to have an impact that endangers the interests of the countries. “There will be journalists who will seize on this point and we don’t want the dollar to collapse instead of doing something good for Opec.”
Investors Business Daily describes people who apparently do not know or can not articulate the interests of their country:
Cheney headed an energy task force…with energy consumers begging for relief at the pump, there’s been little follow-up on those task force plans. When they were first proposed in early 2001, gas hovered around $1.50 a gallon and oil was about $25 a barrel. Now gas is $3.05 and climbing; crude is trading above $90 a barrel, marching ever closer to its inflation-adjusted high of $102 set in 1980. The administration doesn’t seem to be even talking, let alone doing, much about the soaring cost of petroleum…
The Energy Department Web site promotes “solar fairs” and contests in which children can offer up ideas for solving the energy crisis.
IBD says of the Bush administration: “its inaction gives the appearance that it’s turned a tin ear to a crisis hurting more Americans — one that a majority says is ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important to their presidential choice.” Just so.
November 17th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
The damage to the USA’s standing in the world economy might ultimately outweigh Bush’s fecklessness as a war leader.
During the Clinton-era Internet bubble, America was leading the world into the future; when the bubble burst, much of enduring value survived and continued to grow. During the Bush-era real estate bubble, America fabricated funny money out of mortgaged futures; the aftermath is repossessed overpriced houses.
Help might be on the way. Giuliani, Romney, Clinton, McCain and Thompson all seem like more promising Presidential material than, in hindsight, were the Three Stooges of Bush, Gore and Kerry.