Finally, some common sense on the bailout

David Harsanyi at the Denver Post has the right idea. Let's just step back and do nothing just yet. He asks what is to me a perfectly reasonable question: "Are there really only two choices: a depression or nationalization?" He wonders why the rush. Why aren't elected officials taking time to see whether we can affort the bailout without spending cuts, seeing whether the private sector can assist in rescuing financial institutions? "Elected officials could have explored these questions rather than scattering for political cover," he writes. "Conceivably, there is more to governance than the path of least resistance. There must be more to a debate than fear and/or loathing"

After the political smoke has settled, we have to ask ourselves whether it is such a good idea to have government, which had a large hand in creating the problem, take complete responsibility for solving it.

Mr. Harsanyi then quotes Jeffrey Miron, an economics professor at Harvard: "Most of our worst ideas are reactions to emergencies — some imagined and some real. We're in a fix. There will be consequences. But every now and then, the solution to a crisis is to do nothing. Especially when what we're doing is an assault on all those pesky principles we're supposed to be protecting in the first place. "

Amen!