Dancing Like A Dad

What follows is the text of a September 27th article written for The Des Moines Register (specifically for its young professional supplement, Juice) by Mike Draper, the fairly well-known owner of the Des Moines t-shirt store, Raygun.  (I would link to it, but their web site only allows so many non-subscription visits.)  This should be required reading for every Iowan, and maybe everybody else:

Governor Terry Branstad would be a lot more likeable if he just never opened his mouth. Whenever he starts to give his opinion, I feel like a high schooler whose dad has decided to show off his dance moves in front of you and all your friends.

Most of his infractions have been pretty minor. There was his declaration this past May that companies “want to get out of California as quick as they can. We welcome them to Iowa.” Unfortunately, the shirts we’ve been saving for Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page have been gathering dust in our store since spring.

That was just after he called for a congressional investigation into the “pink slime smear campaign” as well as state laws against filming inside food factories. The last thing we want people to know is what they’re eating.

All TB has done, though, pales in comparison to his wall-to-wall B.S. editorial in The Des Moines Register earlier this month: “Obama has worn out his welcome.” It reads like something the Republican National Committee jotted down on a couple cocktail napkins, then attached our governor’s name. But if Branstad actually did write it (and more frightening, believes it), this isn’t your uncoordinated dad just dancing for all your friends, this is your dad stepping onto the “American Idol” stage.

“In Iowa,” Terry writes, “we know a thing or two about building success with our own two hands. ... We don’t look at our farms or our factories or our businesses and say, ‘Look what the government built.’ ”

Good god. He writes this from the center of a state that is up to its hog-nuts in federally subsidized agriculture, federally subsidized ethanol, and federally subsidized wind energy. He writes this within days of giving the largest economic subsidy in Iowa history to a foreign fertilizer production company. He writes this from a state whose governor declared he’d create 200,000 jobs (how a governor would do this without “picking winners or losers” needs to be explained to me). He writes this from a state whose commemorative quarter depicts a public school building painted by our most famous artist, Grant Wood, whose livelihood during the Depression was sustained by the Federal Art Project.

As a business owner who has never used a federally backed loan, who has never had a government contract, who has never really had any direct aid to speak of, I’d be in a good spot to claim that “I built it” if I wanted to sound like more of an a-hole than I already am. But I still can’t. After all, I was born into a stable home, in a stable state, educated K-12 in a public community school, graduated from college debt-free because of my parents, and opened a business in a building that was constructed with the help of Tax Increment Financing.

From direct help like the mortgage interest deduction to peripheral help like roads, everyone in America has taken some form of government assistance. Everyone wants government assistance cut, but not their government assistance. I can forgive 24-hour news commentators for making brash, incorrect declarations, because their news model is built on B.S. But I worry when our elected officials start to sound like our 24-hour news commentators.

At least Barack Obama is in luck: Branstad declares that he’s “not resting until Mitt Romney gets the votes to send him to the White House.” If his promise for Mitt gets as far as his promise to not pick winners and losers, Obama is in great shape.