Where Presidents Have No Power

Posted May 5, 2004, 3:46 p.m.

This is a great column by Charles Krauthammer that appears on the back page of the May 10 issue of Time Magazine. It gets to the heart of what I’ve been saying for a long time—Presidents have virtually no control over the economy.

Both sides will CLAIM that the president controls the economy (Bush will say that he’s responsible for economic growth, Kerry will say that Bush has caused job losses and that Clinton caused the ’90s economic boom), but in the real world it’s businesses, investors, and people who control the economy. The government can help or hurt some, but it’s not their show.

Where Presidents Have No Power: Don’t give them credit (or blame) for the economy—it’s beyond their control (Time Magazine).

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

Today, cultural relativism in the West discourages cross-cultural judgments, thus impeding the reform of injustices around the world and inhibiting the defense of Western civilization.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. . . . We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one. . . .

You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments that stand out . . . are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love.

Since at least the mid second century until the present time, Christians have made predictions regarding Jesus’s second coming and the end of the world. The one thing they all have in common is they are all incorrect. . . .

As natural inequality is very great, fortunes become unequal as soon as every man exerts all his faculties to get rich.

Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation

Do what you can do, not what you can’t. Then build on the momentum.

Behold, this child [Jesus] is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.

I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke.

As an ancient axiom states, the Church makes the Eucharist, and the Eucharist makes the Church.

You may encounter many defeats, but you just must never be defeated.

Campaign pledges . . . ought to carry something of the guarantee principle and money-back policy that an honorable business institution carries with the sale of its goods.

For all things in the world, though now united, tend to separation.

The supreme court under this constitution would be exalted above all other power in the government, and subject to no control.

[My father] gave me a piece of advice that I have always remembered, namely, that, if I was not going to earn money, I must even things up by not spending it.

I am dumbfounded at how little philosophical and metaphysical importance the human mind has attached to the vital subject of excrement.

A government, forever changing and changeable, is, indeed, in a state bordering upon anarchy and confusion.

And no sooner will falsehood be dispersed than the nakedness of violence will be revealed in all its ugliness—and violence, decrepit, will fall.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

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