Posted 6:20 AM by steve

I was half-watching (so I may have some elements a bit off) a bit of Sean Hannity a couple of nights ago where he was ranting about Barney Frank's proposal to regulate salaries for all employees (not just CEOs) at firms receiving federal bailout funds... and I came away mightily unimpressed.

Hannity, as you might expect, was against Frank's proposal. But he was, in my mind, losing the battle to the woman (I don't know who she was) he was debating. Her line, which was a good one and one she justifiably kept repeating, was something along the lines of "these firms are getting our tax dollars, shouldn't we have oversight as to how the money is spent?"

And all Hannity could come back with, at least as long as I could stand watching, was to blather on with something about the sanctity of contracts and government expanding its reach and so on.

His opponent used him to sweep the floor. She had her line, she stuck with it and Hannity never (again, as far as I was watching) scored any points.

On one hand, this doesn't matter, as his TV audience is comprised of conservative true believers and as far as they're concerned, Hannity won hands down.

But... if the GOP hopes to shed its minority status, it has got to do a better job of scoring points with the moderates who will determine the winners and losers of elections... and these folks, given their choice between the two arguments offered, are going to go with Hannity's opponent every time.

Moderates don't get worked up in a lather about 'creeping government power'. They don't go to sleep at night worrying about the sanctity of contract rights and whether Barney Frank is trying to pass a bill of attainder (which most people can't define let alone care about). They do care about how their tax money (even if they themselves aren't paying much) is being spent. They do care about whether people (and especially people working at firms believed to be responsible for the mess we're in) are profiting on the backs of taxpayers.

So what should Hannity have done? He should have tapped into the public's belief that people who work in government work there largely because they couldn't get good jobs in the private sector... and used this perception to argue that the last thing we should want is for the federal government to try and micromanage these businesses.

Yes, he could have replied, we do want oversight... but with businesspeople brought in from the outside to fix the situation, not with Congressional staffers or Administration bureaucrats. Given the mess Congress has made (and keeping in mind their pathetically low approval ratings), why should we want them involved in business operations any more than the absolute minimum? If we are looking for these companies to get back on their feet as quickly as possible, why would we want Congress - which, as a group, has absolutely no experience running a business - involved in that business? Why, if we are bringing in new management, would we want to tie their hands by restricting the way they go about restoring the health of these companies?

Put another way, what do you think most Americans would get more worked up about: Congress unilaterally breaking contracts? Congress hitting some out-of-favor group with a punitive tax hike? Or Congressional meddling in things they know nothing about that will cost us far more than if they keep their noses out of the way of the professional - and proven - management brought in to replace the guys who screwed up?

And the sad thing is that Hannity's fans would get just as worked up over this as they would over the points he made. And given the choice between making the argument that appeals to only X number of people and making an argument that appeals to 10X number of people, why wouldn't you look to make the second argument?