Scott Adams on Politics

Scott Adams, the author of the Dilbert comic, has to be one of the smartest people alive.  He blogs about all kinds of stuff, and lately a lot of it has been about politics.  I think he’s a liberal, but it’s hard to tell for sure, and in any case his writing isn’t biased; it’s an extremely rational and fair look at all sides of the issues.  Not only that, but some of his readers post really good stuff in the comments regularly.  Here’s a quote from a recent piece:

Quoting Scott Adams:

My favorite comment [on a previous post] was from Tigerfan who said, "When McCain says he doesn’t understand economics, people seem to infer he must be an idiot.  In fact economics (real economics, not the nonsense you get on talk shows and business hours) is very, very difficult and involves a great deal of complex math.  They don’t hand out Nobel Prizes for knitting after all."

That summed it up nicely.  Our real choice is between two candidates who don’t understand economics.  And they both want to govern a country full of people who also don’t understand economics while thinking they do.  That makes the old, senile guy the only person in this scenario that isn’t deluded or lying.  He tells you up front that he doesn’t understand economics. [...]

You also have to factor in the economic stimulus of all the war spending.  As much as you might not like boosting the fortunes of defense-related companies, that’s a big part of the American economy.  Cutting a dollar from the defense budget doesn’t mean you have an extra dollar to reduce the deficit. [...]

The budget impact of the near term clearly favors Obama and his get-out-faster approach.  The economics of the long term are unclear.  McCain’s approach is more of an insurance model; pay now so maybe you don’t get in bigger trouble later.

I know that hardcore liberals hate Bill O’Reilly, because the Hardcore Liberal Handbook tells them that they’re supposed to, but the fact is that O’Reilly, like Adams, is extremely rational and fair regardless of his own beliefs.  (O’Reilly has more of a temper, sure, but that only makes him more entertaining to watch.)  Fox News has other hosts who sub for Bill about once a week, and it seems clear that they’re attempting to find and groom potential replacements for when Bill eventually passes away.  And frankly, they all suck compared to Bill; they’re OK in and of themselves, but they just don’t have what Bill has.  I used to worry about what would happen to The Factor when Bill’s gone, but now I think they should just hire Scott Adams to replace him.