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The Dark Art

Today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal reports on Barack Obama’s economic "plan" and, on another page, summarizes remarks on the economy recently offered by Hillary Clinton.

Sen. Clinton said, as the WSJ reports, that "she
fears the U.S. is slipping into a Japanese-style economic malaise that
will overwhelm the Federal Reserve’s considerable powers"  Sounds scary.  To alleviate our fears, she and Obama each offer their own "solutions" for the economy.

But how
scared would you be if such fears were expressed instead by, say, your
veterinarian or your proctologist?  Because these specialists (and perhaps even geniuses) in their
respective fields have no expertise at diagnosing the economy, you’d be well-advised to take their economic concerns with a grain of salt. 
And you should do the same, but doubly so, with any pronouncements on the economy offered up by Sen. Clinton, Sen. Obama, and Sen. McCain.  Not only do these politicians have no expertise in economics — their specialty is winning political elections — but as Sen. Clinton’s recent sniper-fire whopper reveals, successful practitioners of the
dark art of politics possess an unusual
propensity to lie and dissemble.

Almost all that any politician says on any topic other than political strategy
should be treated with even less respect than would be accorded a
professional circus-clown’s speculations about string theory.

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