They should know what it’s like to run a business.

I guess this is old news, but it’s a great lesson that needs to be brought out.

George McGovern laments that after his experience in the bed-and-breakfast business he realizes that laws and regulations pertaining to small business are actually hurting the lower-wage workers whom he had tried to help during his entire political career. With his Stratford Inn in bankruptcy, McGovern now says:

In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business.... I wish that during the years I was in public office I had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better Senator and a more understanding presidential contender… To create job opportunities, we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities.

Politicians at all levels never stop to consider what their interference in businesses does to the businesses and to the economy as a whole.  Government regulation hurts most businesses, but in some cases the politicians write the laws to help certain businesses at the expense of competitors. 

What really gets me is that these politicians are by and large unqualified to run a business, let alone regulate an industry.  Undoubtedly the government regulation is responsible for many jobs moving out of the country.  But when the subject comes up the politicians blame the businesses for the consequences of their own actions. 

By and large the answer is to regulate the businesses less.  Since the politicians and government can’t do it right, they shouldn’t try. 

Right now it seems we have six frontrunners for the nomination of their parties.  Of the six, five of them are utterly unqualified to regulate businesses or the economy.  In fact at least four of the six are openly hostile to the free enterprise system, Clinton, Obama, Huckabee and McCain.  The only one of the six that knows a whit about what it takes to successfully operate in the private sector is Mitt Romney.  Guiliani’s career has been mostly in the public sector, but I don’t know that he’s hostile to the people that actually do things in this country.