George Will on Populism and Power

Quote of the day from George Will, emphasis mine:

The way to achieve Edwards' and Huckabee's populist goal of reducing the role of "special interests," meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money. But populists want to sharply increase that role by expanding the regulatory state's reach and enlarging its agenda of determining the distribution of wealth. Populists, who are slow learners, cannot comprehend this iron law: Concentrate power in Washington and you increase the power of interests whose representatives are concentrated there.

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

Every would-be third party, progressive reformer tilting at the power of corporations and special interests needs to consider these words. If you think the answer is more government, or different government - and when you question them about the specifics, once they stop changing the subject more government is always where the solution ultimately resides - then you haven't provided anything else beyond the status quo, which leads you back into the same old situation.

You can't be a socialist and a quasi-libertarian at the same time. If you want to put power in the hands of the people, you have to actually trust them with liberty, and the economic consequences of that liberty, including the way prosperity is distributed and social decisions you cannot centrally control.

And, hmm. Did you read what Will said (and didn't say) about Barack Obama? Very interesting.