A village of pygmies
Jerry Bowyer began his recent TCS column about what's wrong with conservative leadership by telling a great Winston Churchill story I hadn't heard before. It was after Churchill was defeated by socialist Clement Atlee. Churchill was at a urinal when Atlee walked in and took the urinal next to him:
… Churchill looked up at him, zipped up, moved a couple of urinals farther down and resumed his business. "Why Winston, I had no idea you were so modest.", said Atlee. "It's not modesty, Prime Minister. It's only that every time you find something that is large and functions well, you try to nationalize it, and I thought it best not to take a chance!"
But the subject of the column isn't the giant that was Churchill:
… Let me say in print what so many of us believe in our hearts: the present generation of conservative leaders has failed us miserably. For the most part, congressional republicans are a village of pygmies. Few have genuine leadership qualities. Fewer still can compose a clear English sentence in defense of our ideas. Our president, whom I love, certainly cannot. Our nominee is a man who spent too many decades in the DC Skinner Box where he learned to flinch every time his inner Reagan threatened to say something true about the left. Sen. McCain said in his most recent appearance on Meet the Press that he had appeared there more than any other guest in its history. He thought that was a good thing. I thought, "That's why he's losing."
How could he have possibly believed that he could win an investor-bashing bidding war with a utopian socialist?
RTWT.
