THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

In today's collection of op-ed's is one that speculates on what the state of the union would be if Jeb Bush had been elected instead of his "challenged" brother. It assumes from the beginning that the conservative agenda would have succeeded wonderfully well. Still it lets us now that even Brilliant Jeb would not have heeded the warning signs ahead of the World Trade Center disaster. I refuse to consider that this was part of the plan. Without saying so, it assumes that BJ would have taken on the same crew of advisors. This is one hard to swallow assumption. The idea that BJ would take in Cheney and Rummy and Gonzales, and other incompetents of their ilk, flies in the face of the excellence that the writer attributes to BJ in his handling of Katrina. And again, this assumed excellence belies the assumption that BJ would also have gone into Iraq. We know that BJ was just as capable of screwing up as his simpler brother, but he also was able to learn from his mistakes. I don't know if there is a category of hagiographic fantasy, but this piece would be an award winner.

A companion piece of fantasy is by Roy C. Smith who asserts that CEO's are not overpaid. He states that CEO's are darn good managers who are worth every penny and it's not their fault if their stocks tank. Along the way he sinks his own arguement with this bit of information.

Gerstner was not about to give up his lucrative future at American Express, where he was heir apparent to the CEO's job, without a gold-plated contract that would reward him for success and cushion him against failure.

The simple fact is there is no down side to being a CEO. You get to walk away with all the goodies no matter what you do. Call me old fashioned but I think that makes them overpaid. I am willing to overlook perk packages that, after CEO's are paid huge salaries and pre-planned bonuses, also pays many of their living expenses. We won't even discuss packages that give CEO's huge chunks of stock before they have read their first memo as well as the accrued dividends before the awards are vested.

For a little contrast I strongly recommend reading this piece by Ben Stein. If you ever believed that CEO's were working for the company or the shareholders, this should disabuse you of that notion, right quick.