Oh, the possibilities: If politicians were more like ranchers ...
Unlike those running the government, belt-and-suspenders crowd tells truth
We’d be a lot better off if ranchers ran the country.
This isn’t a conservative versus liberal attitude, just an observation. I’m a long way from the Beltway, and I don’t spend time around politicians and lobbyists. I hang around with the belt-and-suspenders crowd. The kind of men and women you find at the auto parts and hardware store. You know, people like ranchers, who actu- ally fix things.
Ranchers don’t have a political system. They just have cows. Every cow matters. Ranchers run black cows with white cows and red cows and brown cows. To the rancher, they’re all valuable. This confuses politicians. The politician says I like red cows because that’s the kind of cows we like where I come from. They’re the only ones that I’m going to take care of. It’s obvious that a politician has never heard of a “first cross.” That’s where different breeds get together and make a stronger breed. Kind of like what ideas used to be in politics.
Ranchers save. For a rainy day, a roof, a repair. Politicians save favors and vacation days. When ranchers spend money, it’s their own money. They don’t waste money. If a bucket of feed costs $10, the rancher had better have $10 in his pocket. The politician spends other people’s money. A budget to a politician is like a
bag of dog food to a dog. It’s all theirs and not yours. Now go get another bag.
Ranchers know what a rattlesnake is. Ranchers aren’t scared of them but they are wary of them. A rancher doesn’t try and change a rattlesnake. You aren’t going to make rattlesnakes warm and friendly. Rattlesnakes are going to try and bite and poison you because that’s what they do. It’s their nature, and the sooner Washington quits trying to change the nature of strangers and such, the better off we’d be.
A rancher knows that good fences make good neighbors. A rancher knows when a neighbor’s cow gets into his place and likewise a neighbor knows when the rancher’s cow gets into his place. Once they know this, they don’t debate it. They fix it.
A rancher is always willing to help his neighbor out — at least as long as the neighbor does the same. A rancher isn’t going to waste his time going across the country to help some stranger out because that fella, likely as not, is not going to come help him. Time away from the herd is time wasted.
Deficit spending is a foreign language to a rancher. It would be like talking Hindi to a Georgia peach. Makes no sense to you or the peach. Just talking to the peach makes you a little dusty in the attic; kind of like borrowing money and never thinking of paying it back. The rancher knows if he goes to the banker for money, that banker is going to charge him more than the actual cost because the banker has to make a living, too. A banker to a politician is like your kindly old grandfather. You know he’ll give you more money every year and never ask for any of it back.
Ranchers would treat money managers and hedge fund managers like the boll weevil. Eradicate ’em! Like a boll weevil, all they do is suck the life out of the plant. I mean, selling off pieces of your company because someone who might buy it tells you to? That’s like a rancher selling off all his bulls. It kinda makes the rest of the herd useless.
Lastly, ranchers don’t need speechwriters. A rancher talks straight. Straight as six o’clock. A rancher knows what he is going to say, and it doesn’t matter if he is saying it in the barn or in church. It’s the truth. Now that’s as refreshing as a spring rain on a clover field.
A lot of our great leaders have loved their time on ranches or out in the country. I can’t say that our ranchers would love their time in Washington. A rancher loves his country and he loves his herd. The herd is family and they all have names. A rancher doesn’t care if he’s liked by all of his cows or even a majority of his cows. A rancher knows that it’s his job — his only job — to care for the pasture and for all of the herd. And if it all goes bad at the end of the day, unlike the politicians, the rancher can go home and barbecue his constituents.