J.E. Dyer: Palin knocks it out of the park

"Palin focuses like any good executive on the big picture."
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To say that J.E. Dyer was impressed with Sarah Palin's Facebook post "Conquering the Storm" would be quite the understatement. The Hot Air Green Room contributor, in a Tuesday commentary says Gov. Palin's op-ed on the debt/downgrade situation "strikes the right tone and is at once simple, direct, and comprehensive." Dyer finds Sarah Palin's common sense approach to the problem and her focus on how to deal with it to be refreshing:

She makes no bones about the significance of the problem we face. I am particularly impressed with her point that if we don’t square ourselves away, the specter hangs over us of IMF staffers showing up on our doorstep with China and France and Germany arrayed behind them, ready to throw folders on a desk and start telling us how much we can spend on cable TV and incidentals each month. Whether things would really play out for the US as they are playing out for Greece and Ireland is a valid question, but Palin is quite correct that the pitched confrontation is on the horizon now, as it was not six weeks ago – and she has the courage to face that possibility head-on. It’s not pleasant to mention it, but it’s the right thing to do.

The last third of Palin’s post is devoted to laying out what we need to do. Grow the economy by releasing the regulatory clamps on it, starting with the energy sector. Cut spending and reform entitlements. She doesn’t pretend the latter would be easy, but she faces head-on the fact that it is inescapably necessary. I urge you to read her post for the discussion of particulars. It is material and convincing without being in the weeds.

The piece is positive and encouraging for its forthrightness. There is nothing “clever” to be done in this situation; it’s all straightforward. The US federal government has to cut spending and let the economy grow, even if that means breaking the stranglehold of unions on the public trough and overruling advocacy groups and government bureaucrats who don’t want the economy to grow. Pretending that the federal budget is too complex to be governed by the ordinary rules of accounting – or that the US is too special to be limited by the ordinary definition of fiscal solvency – is a dodge, not a sign of insight or expertise.

Palin focuses like any good executive on the big picture. We have to cut spending and get government out of the economy’s way so it can start pumping out revenues again. These things are increasingly obvious to everyone, and moreover, they constitute a plan. Talking ourselves into corners about other, tangential things isn’t even interesting any more. It feels so wrong that it’s hard to watch anyone’s news program at the moment: no one seems to be talking about what matters.

What is interesting is how few in our national political life have put the case together, as Palin has, without temporizing or bloviating. I haven’t heard anyone else do what she does with this post. She acknowledges the actual, enormous scope of the problem, envisions a solution, and outlines what to do to achieve it, with encouragement that it can be done. It is sad and a little frightening that so many Americans have become unable to see this for what it is: leadership. Almost everyone else is focused more narrowly, on one aspect of the problem or another, and a good few commentators don’t seem to even have the vocabulary or the mental infrastructure to address the problem itself; they can only express opinions about the impossibility of the politics surrounding it.

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Dyer concludes that while others who have opined on the debt/downgrade crisis have flailed away at it, Sarah Palin is right on target. She clearly articulates the problem -- Washington spends too much, and its propensity for regulation puts a damper on economic growth and revenues. Gov. Palin's talent for using social media to state her her case in her own terms, yet terms that are easily understood by those she reaches out to with her Facebook policy statements, observes Dyer, is a plus in today's confrontational political climate. "She remains one of the best reasons to not let the MSM dictate our ideas and preferences to us."

- JP