WASHINGTON, D.C. Aug. 14 (DPI) – Former Obama economic adviser Lawrence Summers suggested in a recent op-ed that a presidency with a single term of six years might help government function better, a logical proposal that was met – somewhat surprisingly — by a throng of angry and suspicious reader posts.
More than 900 posts followed Summers’s essay, which appeared this week on washingtonpost.com and in Monday’s Washington Post newspaper. Most reader posts suggested Summers was either doing the Democrats’ bidding or trying to expand government – neither of which makes much sense as a motive, especially at a time when the national legislature barely functions.
Most of the posts – even the most popular ones – questioned Summers’s motives while many others dismissed the proposal as a desperate move by a Democratic operative. The two most popular:
The author’s bias, that the government to do something as opposed to not doing something, is not universally held, and it is a bias for more and more government.
The liberals always talk about “reform” when they’re about to get their b___ts kicked.
The blowback suggested that Summers, hardly a Democratic firebrand, is on the right track with his proposal.
Another Post blogger, who contacted other political analysts the following day, seemed to support the proposal, which Summers argued would make a sitting president more effective in governing.