January 25, 2005

Bredesen Critiques Own Party

Lance Frizzell recounts a harsh critique of the Democratic Party by one of its rising stars, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen. Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds has more thoughts on Bredesen's national prospects - and the prospects for the party itself if it fails to distance itself from its loony left - here. And Nashville newspaper columnist Tim Chavez has a critical column about Bredesen here. I don't fully agree with Chavez, by the way, that every economic development deal Bredesen negotiated while Mayor of Nashville was a bad deal. While some of Bredesen's deals do not generate a positive ROI for Nashville in and of themselves, they did boost Nashville's economy and its psyche in ways that the deal's bottom line alone can not measure.

In the 1980s, Nashville was suffering a crisis of confidence that was a drag on its economy. And downtown was a bleak wasteland of mostly empty buildings. Today, none of those things are true, and Nashville is widely recognized as one of the best places to locate or launch a business. Bredesen's big-dollar deals are a big reason why. He got Nashville revved up about itself, though most certainly the deals could have been better negotiated and cost taxpayers less. And Chavez is most certainly right that the mainstream media tends to coddle and cocoon Bredesen in the warm blanket of positive and generally uncritical press.