What Washington Can Learn from Baseball's Commish
Major League Baseball moved this week to protect one its most storied franchises: the Los Angeles Dodgers. In doing so, Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, has apparently decided that the risk of the organization missing payroll, not fielding a team for a given game, or basically screwing up an entire league wasn’t an acceptable scenario. Selig’s made the right move. In fact, Washington should be paying attention.
Selig’s bold step made me wonder: Wouldn’t this be an appropriate time to replace Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury with Bud Selig? After all, there’s a lot to recommend about Selig.
While Mr. Selig understands that spending more than one takes in does not work in ether the short run or the long run, he also understands that creditors like to be sure they are going to be paid. He also apparently understands that promising to reduce spending and actually taking action to reduce spending are different. He understands that commitment starts today and that today's bills can’t be paid with the hope that a recent draft choice is going to have a batting average of .395 and hit 50 home runs in five years. That new phenom might or might not fill the stadium in a couple years time and the creditors won't loan any longer on that hope and chance.
Selig gets it. He’s a serious man: When times are tough, he sits at his desk working, not running around the country trying to misdirect blame. He’s working with his colleagues to forge a solution for the Dodgers and the national pastime. While it's sad to see the Dodgers in their time of distress, it’s refreshing to see a man working at fixing problems rather than talking them to death.
The choice is clear. Will anyone in Washington take note?