[The Sabbaticus]

Incompetence Is the Norm
Amid Trump’s visa storm, a German reminder of what bad policy looks like.

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Jan. 31, 2017 6:56 p.m. ET
93 COMMENTS

A leader who makes decisions of sweeping import without thinking through the consequences? This charge, leveled against President Trump, is in fact a democratic redundancy. It applies widely, maybe universally. Case in point: After 12 years Germany will be deciding in September whether to re-elect just such a leader. Her name is Angela Merkel.

Mrs. Merkel’s list of ill-considered policy spasms include:

• After the Japanese tsunami and earthquake, she precipitously ordered the closure of Germany’s 17 nuclear plants. Never mind that not a single death, among the 18,000 in the Japanese earthquake and its aftermath, was caused by radiation exposure—though 1,600 deaths are estimated to have resulted indirectly from the unnecessary evacuation of 300,000 Fukushima prefecture residents.

• With her Energiewende, she ordained Germany’s forced march toward renewable power, which recently collided with stable high-pressure systems that left Germany cloudy and windless for three weeks. Now Germans learn, at catastrophic expense, they must maintain duplicate power systems, one running on coal. Germany’s CO 2 emissions are higher than when Mrs. Merkel started.

• She threw open the European Union’s gates to Middle Eastern and African migrants, a decision now seen as a direct spur to Brexit, the rise of anti-EU parties across the Continent, even the election of the anti-NATO, anti-EU administration of Donald Trump in the U.S.

• She adopted “extend and pretend” tactics for Europe’s debt crisis, buying time for Germany’s banks but leaving indebted countries struggling with stagnation and threatening to bring down Europe’s common market and currency system.

Mrs. Merkel’s spinning and trimming, let’s be fair, has also been extraordinarily successful at keeping her in power, the first job of any elected politician. When it comes to fixing any problem or setting Europe on a productive path, however, the record is incomplete but mainly suggests a valiant effort to push off disaster onto somebody else’s watch.

At some point, the incoming Trump administration will achieve a greater smoothness in its consideration and implementation of policy—unlike the chaotic rollout of its travel ban.

The opportunity before Mr. Trump and the Republican Congress, for a major overhaul and rejuvenation of American institutions in the direction of a faster, more dynamic economy, remains in hand.

But the actual signs have always been more ambiguous and less encouraging than many would like to believe. One Merkel lesson is that rent-seeking almost always takes over. Her energy vision, whatever it might have been, is now consumed by the demand of wind farms and solar installers for subsidies, and the clamor of politically-connected businesses for exemptions from the resulting high electricity prices.

In the short weeks since Mr. Trump was elected, the vision of clean, straight tax reform has gone out the window. Instead of merely lowering or, ideally, ending the corporate rate, we may get a 20% border-adjustment tax to go along with a 20% corporate income tax. That is, two taxes instead of one, which Congress can immediately start peppering with exemptions, exclusions and deductions.

His promise of deregulation for the auto industry in return for job promises has been notably scant on details of the deregulation. A rationally “disruptive” president would seek a legislative end to the 40-year experiment in regulating fuel consumption, phenomenally bureaucratic and ineffectual. Here’s betting, when all is said and done, Team Trump will be satisfied with rejiggering the rules to increase the favoritism toward Detroit’s pickups and justify the large investments of Tesla, GM and others in electric vehicles.

Health-care reform already may have been fatally undermined by the repeal circus—repeal being an unnecessary diversion and political show. It would be quite a bit easier and more efficient for Republicans simply to graft their priorities onto ObamaCare—first, by deregulating the “essential benefits” list so insurers could design economical policies the public would actually find worth buying.

But those who noticed the absence of the words “liberty” and “freedom” in his inaugural address identified the real problem. Missing is any vision of how America came to be great in the first place.

Mr. Trump has ideas but they are ankle-deep. His transactional presidency may disrupt for the purpose of disrupting, but not clear yet is whether it’s really leading anywhere. Ronald Reagan created a lasting legacy. In his parting address to his staff, he linked his vision of lower marginal tax rates and reduced regulation to the eternal fight against those seeking to drag us a “mile or two more down what Friedrich Hayek called the road to serfdom.”

We didn’t start with Mrs. Merkel by accident. For all his faults, Mr. Trump’s election is at least the biggest sign yet that Western electorates have figured out something has gone wrong with the Western economic model, even if they are divided over exactly what the trouble is.

WSJ

Then he goes on to describe Ronald Reagan as someone to emulate. Incompetence is indeed the norm.

[Potemkin]

Then he goes on to describe Ronald Reagan as someone to emulate. Incompetence is indeed the norm.

Most of Reagan's policies, both domestic and foreign, were a clusterfuck of epic proportions, with one important exception: along with Mikhail Gorbachev, he brought a peaceful end to the Cold War. Credit where credit is due, Sabb.

[Rugoz]

The most incompetent people are journalists.