Unwarranted Halo Effects: Warren Buffett On Politics

In my companion blog, I have provided evidence that, at least for the past five years, Warren Buffett hardly deserves the title "The Oracle of Omaha." In these posts, here and here, I have noted that Buffett has made at least his share of big investment mistakes, if not moreso.

Why is the business media so ga-ga over this guy? This morning, CNBC featured an interview with him in San Francisco, where Becky Quick, a network anchor and reporter, accompanied him. Buffett is holding a series of fundraisers for Hillary Clinton.

At the end of Quick's interview with Buffett, she asked him why he backs both Hillary and Obama. Buffett's reply was simply, stunningly unbelievable. I suppose the video is available today on the CNBC website, but I won't provide a link, because I believe it will be non-functional by tomorrow.

Buffett's reply was that he believes both candidates 'understand our economic system,' or words to that effect, and that 'neither one wants to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.'

Boy, he couldn't be more wrong, could he? Hillary wants to tax and tax some more, to fund her many programs. Programs, she was quoted as saying are too many to mention. That's when she's not busy arguing for governmentally mandated alteration of contracts which CDO investors have with the obligors of the instruments which they have bought.

Obama is no better. He, too, argues for redistributional programs and taxes to essentially take from the so-called rich, and then make the poor even more dependent upon governmental handouts.

Buffett went on to claim that both candidates share his concern that incomes in America become less disparate. Too bad, as I commented here on Alan Reynolds' recent WSJ editorial, that all three are wrong about this trend.

It's truly disturbing when someone who many feel represents free-market capitalism openly supports socialist candidates who will happily dismantle the system which has allowed him to engage in his business as he has for so many years.

I'm not entirely sure which mistake bothers me more. The one identifying Buffett as a consistently superior institutional investor, or his in backing Presidential candidates so liberal that they may as well simply call themselves socialists.

Beware The Faux-Conservative: Mike Hickabee

Kim Strassel wrote a wonderful, informative piece about former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal. It's not the first of its ilk in the Journal, but it is somewhat more current, given Hick-abee's recent rise in polls in Iowa.

As in an earlier Journal piece, by which author I do not recall, Strassel provides details which demonstrate Hick-abee's lie, when he casts himself as a conservative.

He has a nearly-impossible plan to totally revise taxation in America, grandiosely calling for the abolition of the IRS.

As if.

He speaks of support for headline-type conservative positions, such as "lower taxes," a "strong America," and "health care reform." But his detailed, practical plans for such are missing.

Essentially, as another Arkansas Governor before him, Hick-abee is long on style, charisma and jocularity, but short on specifics.

Why should one run for President? To provide solutions not readily available. Why do candidates often run? Because they simply would like the job.

Of the Republicans, I think only Romney and Giuliani genuinely offer specifics on what they would do to handle various issues and problems which our nation currently faces.

I like Thompson but, truth be told, to back him is to back a style and attitude, more than positions and a record. As with the McCain, the maniacal Ron Paul, or Tancredo.

It's the same, I fear, with the latest hick from the South, Mike Hick-abee.