Traveling through China in 1984 with a seven-foot leather bag full of martial arts weapons can be interesting, as Mark Salzman related in his memoir “Iron & Silk.”
The bag contained “five swords, four sabres, a staff, a halberd, two hooked swords, some knives and a nine-section steel whip,” Salzman wrote. “I had receipts and photos and a manila folder full of Foreign Affairs Bureau correspondence” to prove that he was training with a well-known martial arts master, that the weapons were legally obtained and that they were not antiques.
Still, flummoxed Chinese officials on a train he was trying to board started playing a vigorous game of what Salzman called “Let’s Make a Regulation.” The bag is too long, they told him. He argued the point, and it was waived. Then he was informed that he must spend several days applying for a pass. So he would miss his flight back to the US from Hong Kong. The problem was solved only when Salzman ran into a policeman he knew who argued on his behalf and encouraged him to conduct a martial-arts demonstration right there in the train station. Executing one move, Salzman found his pants splitting in mid-air, but he managed to get himself and his sack of danger waved through.
A quarter of a century later, in another administration fond of awarding senior posts to those who enthusiastically quote Chairman Mao, someone noticed that some planes were stuck on the tarmac because an extremely busy traveling day coincided with massive snowstorms.
Ding! Let’s Make a Regulation! Team Obama decreed that massive fines — in the seemingly random sum of $27,500 per passenger — were to be levied on airlines that kept passengers grounded in their planes for three hours. A 120-passenger flight would earn its airline a nice $3.3 million fine.
The normal American process of making a law — Congress, and all that — was already under way. West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller was shepherding a bill with similar aims — but that bill would have faced discussion, and a vote. It’s much simpler to just issue a fiat, one that’s more draconian than what Rockefeller had in mind. So President Obama brought his sabre down on the airlines.
Or did he? Consider all the ways the new policy is a typical Obama administration bungle.
Us-and-them-ism. Airlines are our enemies — big, evil corporations, right? (Never mind the millions of ordinary Americans who hold stock in them. They’re just miserable, selfish capitalists). And frustrated individual passengers are the little guy. Yay, little guy! But how are the airlines supposed to make up the lost revenue from paying these fines? By passing them on to the customer, of course. But don’t worry. If airlines are ever placed in financial peril by these fines, you the taxpayer can simply bail them out.
Smite the mosquito with the bazooka-ism. A $27,500 fine per passenger? It would be far cheaper to simply make the flight free for everyone. In which case passengers would burst into cheers at the three-hour mark, like game show contestants.
All Roads Lead to Washingtonism. Does it occur to any administration official that some problems simply can’t be solved, at least not right away, and certainly not by decree? If the East Coast gets walloped with a major snowstorm during the Christmas rush, there are going to be serious delays. There is nothing Washington can do about this in the short run. In the long run, maybe more runways and airports could be built, but it’s not like LaGuardia is surrounded by empty farmland just waiting to be blessed with an airport expansion.
Did anyone think this through?-ism. Since there isn’t anything a pilot can do about bad weather or air-traffic control, the fines won’t do anything to reduce delays. Here’s what they will do, though: Increase delays. Imagine you’re on a plane that’s been stuck but is finally fifth in line for takeoff. Oops, the clock says you’ve been waiting for two hours and fifty minutes. The pilot is forced to taxi back to the gate and dump you — because he can’t risk passing the three-hour mark when airlines have this funny habit of telling their pilots not to rack up too many $3 million fines. You’re now being dragged off your plane, hurled back into the waiting area and forced to listen to airport-lounge CNN. You’ll just have to wait for the whole process to begin again, when of course you will be eight millionth in line for takeoff.
“Help the little guy” is a campaign slogan. Governing means hiring grownups who actually weigh costs and benefits and are smart enough to choose the best available option, even if that option is doing nothing. But the Obama administration is impervious to noticing the irony of the old Ronald Reagan joke: “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.”