Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Milquetoast Mitt

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Mark Steyn says that Romney has to get a little more apocalyptic:

As noted here previously, the International Monetary Fund predicts that China will become the world’s dominant economic power by 2016. So the guy elected in November will be the first president since Grover Cleveland to know what it feels like to be the global also-ran. Even this, however, understates the size of catastrophe the United States faces. There are no precedents in history for a great power spending itself to death on the scale America is doing. Obama has added $5 trillion to the national debt, and has nothing to show for it. Do you know how difficult that is to do? Personal debt per citizen is currently about 50 grand, but at least you got a La-Z-Boy recliner and a gas-fired barbecue out of it. Obama has spent America’s future, and left no more trace than if he and his high-school “choom gang” had wheeled a barrow of 5 trillion in large notes behind the gym and used them for rolling paper. Right now, combined total debt in the United States is just shy of $700,000 per family. Add in the so-called “unfunded liabilities” that a normal American business would have to include in its SEC filings but that U.S.-government accounting conveniently absolves itself from, and you’re talking about a debt burden per family of about a million bucks. In other words, look around you: the paved roads, the landscaped shopping mall, the Starbucks and the juice bar and the mountain-bike store . . . There’s nothing holding the joint up.

Hmm. “There’s nothing holding the joint up. Steyn 2012”: How’s that poll with the focus groups? Not exactly “Morning in America,” is it? But what happens when you blithely ignore debt for a few decades? Here’s a headline from the Wall Street Journal’s “Smart Money” this very week: “More retirees are falling behind on student debt, and Uncle Sam is coming after their benefits.” Maybe that’s the slogan. “It’s twilight in America: More retirees are falling behind on student debt.”

The good news is that this was probably written before the news of the Ryan pick. It will be interesting to see Mark’s response to that.

Political Commentary, Space

Ryan And Space Policy

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Traditionally, going all the way back to Lyndon Johnson, the vice president has been in charge of space stuff, but there is nothing in either the Constitution or any law about it, it’s just a tradition born of historical accident. And in fact, it’s not the case as often as it is. Johnson and Agnew were heavily involved, Ford and Nelson Rockefeller not so much, Mondale was only to the extent that he tried to kill the Shuttle program, and succeeded in reducing the fleet size (a foolish decision, given that the marginal cost of the additional orbiters would have been little at the time, and we’d have had a more robust program in the wake of the two losses). George H. W. Bush didn’t play much of a role, Quayle did. Gore was heavily involved, Cheney not so much. As far as I know, Biden has not been involved at all, leaving things to Holdren. So it’s not clear whether or not it matters whether or not Ryan will guide civil space policy as a veep. Unusually for a pick, he will likely be heavily involved in the formulation of budget policy overall, and will unlikely have time to deal with issues at the level of a couple billion bucks. On the other hand, I’ve had more than one person tell me that he is (or at least was when young) a devotee of Ayn Rand, and he will be receptive to more individualistic and competitive commercial approaches to space than a typical Republican politician might be.

Anyway, all that said, Jeff Foust did the same thing I did — tried to read tea leaves from his record on what he’d do, and as he says, the dossier is pretty thin. I am encouraged by the fact that he voted against the 2010 NASA authorization bill, which was pretty awful, but I’d like to know why. I would hope it was because (among other things) he recognized the pork that was SLS/MPCV. Anyway, given Romney’s clear complete indifference to the topic, he might be a better person to approach on it than the presidential candidate himself. But I don’t expect this to be a significant campaign issue, even in Florida or Ohio.

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