Reflections of a stormy petrel

95% of American so-called conservative policy is nonsense. If you want to cut public expenditure, legislation and what are known as "cuts" are the bluntest and most damaging of blunt instruments. The very fact that Republicans talk about cutting federal departments as the measure of saving shows that they have not begun to understand the problem. The solution to obesity is not to cut off an arm, it is for the whole body to eat less. And that has very little to do with laws. What you want is to foster an administrative culture in which people take pride in doing more with less, in efficiency and effect. And there you can see why Reaganite demagoguery is a million miles from the point. How do you think the little guy at the bottom of the totem pole, the one who actually does the work, feels, when he is told by his own boss - the President is the head of the public sector, among other things - that he is the problem, not the solution, and that the scariest words in the language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help?" Such demagoguery and effrontery (history books will remember the Ronald Thatcher age as the Age of Bad Manners) may tickle the prejudices of the more ignorant voters, but it will do nothing for your own subordinates (because if you are President, they are) other than embitter them and make them defensive and mistrustful. Congratulations, Great Communicator. Congratulations, cheap imitators.