Linda McMahon’s Delusions

The New York Times Magazine ran a really interesting article on Linda McMahon. McMahon, for those of you who may not know, is one of the founders of World Wrestling Entertainment, along with her husband Vince, and she is the Republican candidate for Chris Dodd’s old Senate seat. Considering we all live in Connecticut now, it makes sense to pay attention to local races, especially one as important as this. Republicans have said that if they have any hope of retaking the Senate, or of making significant gains there, they need McMahon to beat Democrat Richard Blumenthal, the longtime Connecticut Attorney General. One quote from the article really stood out to me, crystallizing an important misconception a lot of people may have about how government actually works. McMahon said, “The voters in Connecticut are going to have a very clear choice in November… He’s (Blumenthal) been in the lawsuit business. His business is suing people. My business is creating jobs. My business is adding and building to the economy. So it’s just a very clear choice.”

Well, hold on a second there. It seems we’ve been hearing this a lot lately. The argument goes that government, with is budgets and expenditures and investment portfolios, is just like a large corporation, and therefore the best people to run the government are people who have had success in corporate America. And that seems to make sense, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be a good thing if government preformed like a Fortune 500 company? Don’t we want our country run with such devotion to profit and the bottom line? If you can create jobs at the WWE, shouldn’t you be able to create jobs through the government? Right?

Wrong.

Here’s the problem with that. Government and business don’t actually have that much in common. The first big difference is that while a corporation is devoted to profit, government is devoted to making people’s life better. The government is going to be involved in inherently unprofitable ventures, like Social Security, unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc. No company would be caught dead doing anything like that. And why should they? As long as a CEO can keep his shareholders and Board of Directors happy, she can do whatever she damn well likes. The USA has about 300 million stockholders, and you can’t placate them with a few kind reassuring words at an annual meeting. No politician has nearly the same sort of autonomy as even the most restricted CEO does.

Also, think about this: a company, like WWE, only has to offer the best product in relation to other wrestling companies. It would be ridiculous to judge government by the same token. What if we felt that America was doing well just so long as it was doing better than Saudi Arabia? “America is strong! We give better health care than Zimbabwe!” Can you imagine taking that seriously?

And then we come to the most dangerous part of McMahon’s quote. She seems to be saying that Connecticut voters shouldn’t trust Blumenthal because he’s a politician whose job is to protect the people of the state by suing those who would harm local residents. Now, say what you will about Blumenthal’s record, and it is spotty. But McMahon seems to be attacking more than his record. She’s saying we shouldn’t trust him because he performs a job that most people used to think was pretty damn important! McMahon is implying that people who know how the government works have no place making the government work. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Her position is right out of the Tea Party playbook. Don’t trust the government, ever. Don’t use the government to help people. Public policy wonks are out of touch, and regular Americans can run their country on their own, thank you very much! It sounds nice, but I don’t see any evidence to support their claims. Please, enlighten me, how would Joe the Plumber solve our economic problems, from our dependence on foreign oil to out of control Wall Street banks?

When you have people in office making policy about things they know nothing about, the end result is never good. Look at Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam. LBJ knew nothing about Asia, let alone Vietnam, and because of his administration’s ignorance, hundreds of thousands of lives were lost. Maybe government is best left in the hands of people who know what the hell they’re doing. Government isn’t sexy, it isn’t glamorous, and it shouldn’t be. Government is about making people’s lives better. Linda McMahon doesn’t get it, and neither does the Tea Party. If they take Congress, look forward to insane public policy, incomprehensible bills, and totally misguided ideas. Ah, how I miss the days of Karl Rove. He may have been the antithesis of everything I stand for, but at least the man was smart.