By Robert Pembroke
The unprecedented level of pessimism in our nation is nonsensical and it’s time to try to do something about it. For the next few weeks, I am going to try to find a subject that our Saturday morning “Breakfast Club” can come together on to reduce pessimism — and it isn’t going to be easy.
Our club is made up of nine very old and crotchety men. A few times in the past, I have tried to find something we can agree on in order to save the world. For instance, a few months back at breakfast, one of my friends said we ought to bring back the draft. Now that’s a very good idea and I proposed that as a group we should do something about it. I failed.
If I’m anything, I am persistent. This I learned in my sales career. If you stop knocking on doors, you aren’t going to make any sales. But I also learned that if you don’t adapt to what your competition is doing, you aren’t going to make any sales, either.
So, here’s my plan of action to get our group working together:
“Divide and conquer,” said Julius Caesar. With this in mind, rather than trying to get the whole group working together, I’m going to start with a subset. Periodically, I also have breakfast with two members of our group. Let’s start an action plan for them only.
The power of the “Deep State” — the government bureaucracies — is what should concern all Americans. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 26 that “the 1890 census counted federal government employment, including the military, at only 78,000. USGovernmentSpending.com estimates federal spending [at that time] at $384.3 million (just under $10 billion in 2017 dollars), a mere 2.5 percent of gross domestic product.
In the same article, “How to Dig into the Deep State,” the Journal reported “by 2017, the federal government employed 2.1 million civilians and spent $3.98 trillion — 20.8 percent of GDP.”
I don’t know about you, but I am ashamed that I let this happen. Not only would our Founding Fathers be turning over in their graves, they would be asking, “How could you do this to your children and grandchildren?”
“In the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, federal agencies issued more than 3,000 rules and regulations each year, so many that the White House could not possibly review them all for consistency with administration policy” (Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2018, “Judges Can Check the Administrative State”).
Unconscionable.
Do I think that my breakfast companions are going to buy into an action plan that tries to reverse the growth of the Deep State? No. But hopefully, this will get their attention and they will be receptive to my real agenda, which is to “Draft Jenny for Governor.”
Jenny Wilson has won her party’s nomination and will be running for Orrin Hatch’s Senate seat. She will be competing against the winner of the Republican primary, either Mitt Romney or state Rep. Mike Kennedy. The polls are already showing that the Republican will probably win the seat. But Jenny is going to get a lot of media exposure and if she plays her cards right — and if she wants to — she could win the governorship.
I do believe that I can get my breakfast friends to become involved in Jenny’s bid to become governor. Of course, if she decides not to run for governor or gets elected to the U.S. Senate, my plan is kaput.
My first question to my breakfast friends will be, “How would you like to be those people in a smoke-filled room that control Utah’s governor?” Journalist William Safire coined the phrase “smoke-filled room” during the 1920 Republican convention as a “place of political intrigue and chicanery, where candidates were chosen by party bosses in cigar-chewing sessions.”
I think my friends will jump at the chance to be power brokers and all I am going to ask them to do is to give me a few bucks to start a political action committee.
Robert Pembroke is the former chairman and CEO of Pembroke’s Inc. in Salt Lake City.