He sees himself as a power broker, dealing in privilege

From Ann Althouse, How Would Tom Barrett Have Erased the $3.6 Billion Budget Deficit in Wisconsin?. Althouse is a law professor and blogger with a penchant for textual analysis of which this is an example. Regardless of what people are intending to say, when you listen closely, what are they actually saying?

She is hammering on a candidate in the recall election for evading answering the direct question, How would you have reduced the deficit? She is brutal in her take down only because she is persistent. If there were even a whisper of an answer, it might not be so uncomfortable to read. But there isn't.

Still trying to get to the answer to how Barrett would deal with the budget, Gousha asks: So you would repeal those? Barrett's answer is stodgily cagey:

I'm going to look at those and see whether they are tied to job creation, 'cause for me — and I've seen this as mayor — I have people who come in or businesses that come in who want to have tax incentives, and my questions are always the same: How many jobs are we talking about and are they family-supporting jobs? So that, to me, is the tie.

That is, he doesn't want to generally lower tax rates to stimulate business. He wants particular businesses to come to him and ask for an individual incentive and convince him somehow that their business is the right kind of business, to work through him. He sees himself as a power broker, dealing in privilege. And, of course, in case you haven't noticed, he still hasn't expressed a single idea about how to deal with the budget. He adopted Walker's "hole" metaphor, ignored the fact that Walker filled the hole, told us the now-filled hole shouldn't be dug deeper, and keeps reverting to an urge to re-dig the hole!

I like that phrase, "dealing in privilege". It does seem as if so much legislation today is not predicated on roles and responsibilities or true problem solving; they seem mere exercises in "dealing in privilege." When a white middle class Harvard law professor can achieve advantage over competitors by merely claiming distant Native American ancestry, we have moved past solving some legitimate problem such as underrepresentation or disadvantage and are now merely "dealing in privilege." This "dealing in privilege" chimes with a train of thought I had this morning. It seems as if most people have completely lost sight of and commitment to the desirability of the rule of law and not of man, of pluralism, of representative democracy, etc. and of a nation constituted of responsible citizens equally subject to the laws and of equal agency. Instead, we have more people subscribing (by action rather than word) to the idea of rule by oligarchy of the cognitive elite.

Our national dialogue seems increasingly dominated by echoes of this disrespect of one's fellow citizen. Ideas are advanced to be imposed on others based on expert testimony rather than agreement on the part of those involved or on the basis of actual achieved results. The agenda appears to be set by the oligarchy of the cognitive elite out of Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor, Big Academy, Big Media. The talking heads talk about what they wish to talk about and that often has little to do with or in common with the other 95% of the nation. The oligarchy sustains itself by "dealing in privilege". Regulations are passed, permissions have to be sought, payments have to be made, favors have to be extended.

It all sounds and feels conspiratorial. I don't think there is any particular conspiracy, it is just the nature of the beast. Left untended, rent seeking and self-interest overtake obligation to the commonweal.

It is easy to feel as politics is no longer the mechanism to establish what is in the best interest of the community, but is rather, as Thomas Sowell said, "the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest."

No need to be melodramatic or get carried away by a train of thought, but an oligarchy of the cognitive elite sustained by dealing in privilege has a certain chilling sense of familiarity.