Kinsey on Baker

Micheal Kinsey is a dyed in the wool Democrat but not a partisan. He has taken them to the woodshed when needed and even decried their lack of any coherent vision in the last election cycle. In his latest, "Get Jim in Here, Pronto!"

He makes some excellent points. First, he explains that committees in Washington are not the same as elsewhere. Often they are used as political clubs to drive through unpopular decisions by punting them into "bipartisan" committees that steamroll the opposition and keep whomever from having to expend political capital to get things done.

He, rightly, takes Baker et al. to task for forming this impending debacle:

It's a nutty and not very attractive idea to turn an urgent issue of war and peace over to a commission. Commissions have usually been trotted out for long-run social problems: immigration, debt, health care. Going to war is something that ought to be decided by the people we elect. Congress, in recent decades, has virtually abandoned its duty under the Constitution to make the decisions about when American soldiers are sent to kill and die.

They don't really believe in politics, which is to say they don't really believe in democracy.

Emphasis mine.

As noted, nobody elected Baker and nobody re-elected Bush 41. To trot out that plan because what we're doing now isn't working is a horrible idea.

Where is Schwartzkopf? Put him in as SecDef. If not, put him in charge of this committee.