After I criticized the President’s (or was it Laura’s) ridiculous decision to increase spending for the NEA, a number of people e-mailed me to say that, even if they disagreed with the decision (and almost all of them seemed to), this was a trivial matter, and nothing to be really concerned about. Doubtless, they would have said the same about HHS Secretary’s Thompson’s decision to blow $25 million of your dollars on a nationwide helpline to help smokers quit, but they would have been wrong about that too. As Jacob Sullum discusses over at Reason, if nothing else (and I think that these decisions can be criticized on a good number of grounds), their symbolism alone is disastrous: they reveal an administration wed to a vision of an overbearing, overreaching state and they reveal an administration that cannot be trusted to control government spending, something that is not only a disgrace in a supposedly right-of-center White House, but may also be economically disastrous.

Yes, of course, the administration has achieved a great deal in the war against terror, and, yes, of course, I’d hate to see John Kerry as president, but that doesn’t mean that George W. Bush should be given a free pass on this sort of nonsense. When it comes to growth government spending, Mr. President, slower, please.

Or, dare to dream, how about going into reverse?