“Don’t overcorrect!”
Writing by treason on Friday, 14 of March , 2008 at 5:19 pm
“… So there’s some of the things that are on my mind, and I appreciate you letting me get a chance to come by to speak to you. I’m — you know, I guess the best to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car on a rough patch. If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it’s important not to overcorrect — because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch. And so it’s important to be steady and to keep your eyes on the horizon.”
– President Bush at The Economic Club of New York
I listened to President Bush’s speech on the economy and thought I heard him say that one of the dangers of isolationism and protectionism is a tendency for “retrenching.” Before you roll your eyes, know that it is a real word. A few hours later, though, T and I were out with the dog and he was talking about her current health condition “reprogressing.” He caught himself and just looked at me. I looked back.
“Nice word, George.”
But I understood what he meant, and I understood what the President meant, and both words – one real, one not so much – actually make sense. In fact, the President’s advice in general makes sense. It reminds me of the time T and I and our friend, Tom, the North Dakota farm boy who now lives outside of Kansas City, decided to take a trip to Arizona to catch some spring training games. T was driving a Jeep Cherokee at the time and Tom was in the backseat. I was up front on the passenger side, white-knuckling as T sped over this stretch of Arizona mountain road dotted with signs that said: ELK.
I had lived in Arizona as a child and I knew elk and mountain roads. You may want to slow down a bit, I cautioned. There are signs. There are elk. He said he was perfectly aware of the situation, but I suspected that he really didn’t know about the elk part. And then came the curve… and the legs.
Directly in front of us on the road, just past the curve, were four legs. That’s what the car’s headlights had illuminated. Legs. What was attached to these legs was far above the range of the beams and therefore invisible, but it was, in fact, the mother – or in this case – the father of all elk. My suspicions were justified; clearly, T was unaware that elk were so large. There was hesitation, then the reflexes kicked in.
“Don’t overcorrect!!! Don’t overcorrect!!!,” Tom kept shouting from the backseat.
We swerved, we were on two wheels, we almost hit rock, then almost went off a cliff, but we did not hit the elk and T did not overcorrect. It was as close to overcorrection as possible, but if he had truly overcorrected we’d probably still be in that Jeep, in the ravine, our bones picked clean by friends of Mr. Elk.
Don’t overcorrect. Words to live by, indeed. Someone might have uttered them to Michael Jackson when he first contemplated cosmetic surgery — we don’t know.
As for the economy, there is a simple solution to our current woes. Elect a Democrat in November and the media will report the best economic environment in the last hundred years.
Comments Off
Category: Uncategorized
- Add this post to
- Del.icio.us -
- Digg -
