How Democracies Perish

"The book had a big impact on me for this reason: the essence of it was that when people in a government were able to vote for themselves, and they were able to obtain benefits out of the public treasury, as we can in the United States, that there would come a point at which we would drain more benefits than we would be able to sustain. His whole point was that democracies perish when people recognise their ability to get something at others’ expense, and when they continue to accelerate in that direction, there comes a point at which that society collapses. I had written about it on page 35 of my book long before that had become the number one news story in America. The basic idea is this: when one group of public employees is negotiating with another group of state employees to give each something they want, but they are doing it with someone else’s money, it is not a recipe that will taste good in the end. That was my whole point: that you can’t have two parties negotiating with a third party’s money. The two parties negotiating in this didn’t have skin in the game. You just have politicians trying to save power and union employees trying to get benefits. Each benefits the other in a very vicious and unholy alliance, but the bill is being sent to the taxpayers, who really don’t have a say in it. The cruise really is just a matter of my wife and I going because we’ve been before and love it. And I’ve said all along that my time frame is sometime early this summer. So it’s in keeping with the time frame for me to make a decision. I’m still very much considering a run [in 2012]. One thing that a lot of people haven’t really considered is that the calendar for next year’s election is very different from what it was four years ago. While the media and pundits are ready for the race to begin so they can have something to write about, the people who have to live it – the ones who have to actually play the game, not just watch it from the press box – they have to look at how long can they stay on their feet. If I were to liken this to a boxing match, a 15-round boxing match is already tough enough; unnecessarily adding five to six rounds just doesn’t make any sense."