May 8, 2001

There are two types of people in the world: those who separate people into two types and those who do not.

I am of the former.

Recently, I was reading an article by Ian Brown in the the Globe and Mail in which Ian was trying to distill the feeling of being in Washington DC.

In some steakhouse / bar, Ian chatted up a young blond Republican woman who summed up the transition of US federal powers as such: when Clinton was in power, it was lawyers who were making all the decisons, which is why they got bogged down so much. Now that Bush was in the White House, she continued, the MBAs are in control and these guys would quickly make decisions, and let others sweat the details.

And I thought, could it be that simple? 

There are only two types of political parties: one that is overrun with lawyers; one that is overrun with businessmen.
(for you sticklers : third parties are for  those who can no longer see a difference between the two primary parties)

I'm trying to rack my brain, trying to recall the details when I read One Hundred Years of Solitude many years ago. I thnk I remember Gabriel Garcia Marquez explain how the two first political parties came about: one party believed that children born out of wedlock were legitatmate heirs to their fathers estate. The other party did not.

If that seems like a pretty riduculous reason to create separate political parties, then you may be unaware of the story of Isaac and Ishmael.

Anyway, I didn't really think my political generalization didn't carry much water until I read Mother Jones list of the 400 top political donors.

 

 
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