The American Spectator

Praise should be heaped on AmSpec with an industrial sized front-loader for running frequent commentaries on our dysfunctional federal government. Your piece on the VHA is the latest installment. Those righteous citizens who’ve memorized every jot and comma in the Constitution will readily admit the Founders never promised us a rose garden or a competent government either. In fact, the surest road to success in government is to foul-up big time — bigger budgets, more employees and highly creative excuses for past failures will descend on those in Washington with the worst track record.

Ironically, this formula of fail your way to success is embraced wholeheartedly by voters as how a proper government operation should be run. Take the aftermath of 9/11 for instance. CIA, the agency with the least responsibility for controlling domestic terrorism, was designated as the official “fall-guy” for the foul-up — they failed to predict the disaster, although we were never told beforehand that an accurate intelligence prediction was the one vital factor needed to ensure the massive security apparatus would actually work. A new, powerful mega-agency was then created to fail on an even larger scale, complete with a budget exceeding the annual GDP of most countries.

So far it seems to work, but what if there were another successful terrorist operation against the Big Apple, the preferred target of working fanatics? After numerous congressional hearings to showcase our leaders at work, the usual prescription would be written — more employees, more money and more power offered up to solve every real or imagined shortcoming. It’s like medieval physicians always bleeding the patient to release foul humors, only Congress does it in reverse and pumps in more blood resulting in a very bloated patient.

p>It’s no surprise our Washington mandarins lust after universal health care; opportunities for failure would be legion and, in Washington, with failure comes success. br> — Patrick Skurka br> San Ramon, California /p> p> MR. EXCITEMENT br> Re: John Tabin’s The Man Who Wasn’t There : /p>

Although I was a supporter of Fred Thompson several months ago, I’ve never been a fan of “cherry pickers.” The sum of all of last night’s TV action for me is to confirm that Ron Paul is my guy, given that, realistically, we have only the two dominant parties’ candidates to choose between.