¿Passive, passive, who’s got my passive?

Dear Dr. Bones,

Friday, Jun 15, 2012 04:17 PM EDT Romney gets DREAMy on immigration | After repeatedly vowing to veto the DREAM Act, the candidate suggests he has no problem with Obama’s new policy By Alex Seitz-Wald Fire up the Etch a Sketch. After spending the entire GOP presidential primary affirming his hard-right immigration policies, Mitt Romney took several steps to the left today while responding to the Obama administration’s new deportation policy.... (( ... ))

Betzee Friday, Jun 15, 2012 08:20 PM EDT "I would like to seek legislation that deals with this issue ..." Hate to tell ya Mitt, but GWB tried and failed. He was a a hellava lot more popular with the base than you will ever be, too. Moreover, use of passive voice speaks volumes about your leadership abilities.

Charity may, in a pinch, suppose that Miss Poster was not talking about "I would like to seek legislation that deals with this issue ..." but about a different oracle, viz. "I think the action that the president took today makes it more difficult to reach that long-term solution because an executive order is, of course, a short-term matter and CAN BE REVERSED by subsequent presidents."

Before picking on the Governor’s alleged "leadership abilities," I’d question a couple of details about His Excellency’s grasp of how the non-secret sector in fact operates:  (1) An executive order is not particularly short-term or long-term or any-other-term, what is special about it is that it is an *internal* directive for the Executive Branch. And of course (2), legislation also CAN BE REVERSED also.

Why, ¡even the Fedguv Constitution itself can be reversed!, an arrangement every boozer ought to celebrate daily as Happy Hour dawns over the yardarm.

Moving on to Leadership, H. E. does rather give the impression that His edicts deserve to be engraved in marble or imperishable brass. Between the H*rv*rd Victory School theory and the practical Baincappin’ experience in H. E.’s background, perhaps it is no wonder that H. E. should take that line. Nevertheless, it is all a bit of a mistake, I fear. Your Baincapper need not worry much about bein’ checked or balanced by anybooby inside her own organization--not unless things are goin’ so badly that the Board of Directors actually wake up an’ madly attempt to do some directin’, an attempt by no means guaranteed to take effect, no matter what the by-laws actually say.

Every Baincapper is a Mussolini in her own secret-sector business corporation, but that by no means guarantees that the next Corporate Titan will not toss all her predecessor’s policies out an’ start mussolinifyin’ in the exact opposite direction.   There is a sort of wild Fairembalance to it: Willard Mitt Romney gets to be the Benito of Baincap an’ hear not a peep against whatever His sagacity may resolve upon only as long as H. E. is actually ensconced in the corner office. The next guy gets the same perks, one of which is that She could, should *Her* sagacity think best, nullify any or all of the formerly unopposable Willardmittian decrees.

And this must necessarily be the case, it seems to me, for, if it were not, poor Ms. Epigone would not in fact have inherited the same job that H.E. used to perform. Worse, Baincap would no longer have a vibrant Benito at the helm to brave the storm, only a Dead Hand of the Past.   Even if the rest of the crew, very improbably, agreed 100% about what WMR would have done, they’d still be only a contemptible committee. Sensible investors will bet on the storm in such circumstances.

None of this has much to do with what they used to teach in high-school Civics, but that is O.K., at least as a speculative proposition. For all I can see to the contrary, anyway, Dead-Hand-of-the-Past Syndrome, so to call it, is quite as dangerous to public policy as to secret-sector Big Management.