George Will blends humor and anger

Using his knowledge and love of baseball, lifelong Chicago Cub fan George Will wowed the Chamber’s Regional Policy Conference dinner audience Thursday with his irreverent views on the political situation in Washington, the economy, baseball and the Presidential race. He managed to add some harsh words for both President Bush and John McCain.

He had fun with his baseball anecdotes, especially with the success of the “Chicago Cubs’ 100 year rebuilding effort finally paying off,” and “You know that every team can have a bad century.”

McCain was cited by Will for the “honorable” positions he frequently takes when discussing his views and positions, which make it difficult for anyone to have serious policy disagreements with anything he says without seeming dishonorable. Will suggested this characteristic display of righteous indignation by McCain will contribute to more polarization in Washington, not less as promised, should the McCain-Palin ticket win in November.

He called George Bush "the most liberal President in the history of the US," due to the growth of the federal government under his watch, especially taking on the debt of huge corporations. Will admitted, in spite of his lifelong conservative credentials, he was angry with the Bush administration for all these recent huge bailouts and other federal power grabs. He expressed concern that this will only lead to more efforts by corporations to get similar bailouts. So the policy implications of all this are “profits are viewed as private, but losses are public.” That is not a good policy for this country.

The danger, of course, from all this mountain of debt is the only way (or, the usual way) the federal government reduces debt is to encourage inflation. This is not a good prescription for our country.

More on the conference in Monday's GRBJ.

John Zwarensteyn, publisher