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Bruce Bartlett Doesn't Like Me




I've annoyed a semi-famous person. I'm stoked.


Bruce Bartlett is a veteran Republican guru -- and, often, a staffer for successful Republican politicians. He was a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan, and a senior policy analyst in the White House under George H.W. Bush.


Since leaving the White House, he's been known largely as a pundit and scold in intra-Republican matters. He is the author for example of IMPOSTER (2006), a broadside at what he saw as the ruinous policies of Bush the younger.


Bartlett since has built something of a reputation as a pundit engaged chiefly in those intra-Republican battles. He is unhappy in particular with certain libertarian institutions and websites. This is where I enter the picture.


Soon after 9 AM Tuesday morning (all my times here will be eastern time), Bartlett tweeted "Ron Paul's favorite website attacks the transcontinental railroad. Way to stay relevant, guys." This was a reference to something on Lew Rockwell's site, though it had apparently originated at Mises.org. .


Ryan McMaken has an article there entitled "Crony Capitalism and the Transcontinental Railroads." He makes the perfectly sound point that during the 1860s, as the first transcontinentals got off the drawing board and started occupying ground, there wasn't much by way of economic justification for them. They were symbols of various intentions, but they weren't viable ways of serving a real and substantial market demand for travel -- or the conveyance of freight -- along those routes.


There is nothing even remotely antiquarian about making this point. President Obama, and others, have cited the transcontinentals as one of the great successes of federal government action, as a precedent of sorts for other large-scale federal action. So its fair to say "whoa --is that a golden calf you are worshipping?" It is because they were so blatantly dependent upon government largesse that these railroads (again using McMaken's words) became "scandal-ridden, wasteful, and contemptuous of the public."


So, I rose to Bartlett's bait. Around 10:08 I tweeted as follows, "The 19th century railroads were the original 2Big2Fail corp-welfare monsters. Is it so awful to say so, Bruce?"


I pause now to refer you, dear blogreader, to an uneven but fascinating book by Dennis Drabelle, THE GREAT AMERICAN RAILROAD WAR. I reviewed this book for The Federal Lawyer. As I wrote in that review, the parts of the book that work the best deal with William Randolph Hearst, Ambrose Bierce, and their struggle against a big railroad bailout that the Central Pacific and its legislative friends were trying to push through Congress in 1896. So this isn't my first railroad-history rodeo.


Indeed, I was "to the manner born," as one of the grandsons of Henry Comstock.


Bartlett deigned to answer that question in the sort of tone Mary Wollstonecraft  once called "gothic affability." "@ccfaille If you like living in the past, think no current issues are worth bothering with."


He later went further (I suspect), writing "Some right wing nut job didn't get the memo that I am to be completely ignored, never mentioned by lovers of liberty." I don't know for sure that is a reference to me. Whether it is or not, it is wonderful. It starts with sticking an absurd label on me (or whomever) and proceeds to twist itself into a complaint that Bartlett isn't getting enough attention.


Anyway, here are my responses. I couldn't resist sending three, and straining somewhat against the hyper-concise twitter idiom.


First, "Check Drabelle's book, esp. re the 1890s politics of railroad refinancing. Bierce and Norris and Hearst oh my."


Second, "short version thedailybeast2012"


Finally, "Current issues didn't pop into existence five minutes ago. They have a history. Does your car have a rearview mirror?"


That will be it, unless he resumes. Anyway, it has been a thrill. I do believe I've exposed the superficiality of the pompous buffoons by whom we are governed. That is the greatest current issue of all.








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