C. Edmund Wright at American Thinker.

Can Barney Frank Dunk on Lebron? No, he cannot. Nor can anyone else in Washington. Nor can they catch passes from Ben Rothlisberger in the Super Bowl or strike out Derek Jeter in the World Series. They are not equipped to do so.

So what?

This ridiculous image speaks to the business malaise infecting the economy since Obama took office. The point is that politicians are equally ill-equipped to run the auto industry or the health industry or the lending industry or the insurance industry — and their determination to do so is sucking all the dynamism from the entrepreneurial class in this country.

With the threat of this administration and congress, what is the possible motivation for anyone with ideas and capital to invest his time, talent, and money into a risky endeavor? There appears to be none. In fact, there appear to be powerful incentives not to invest any time or treasure — thus an economy with almost zero creative inertia.

For Obama voters, almost zero creative inertia means almost no one is having bright ideas, starting businesses based on them, and hiring employees to help share the dream.

Consider: A professional sports league featuring Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, and Robert Byrd is not an enterprise that can successfully draw investors or paying customers, nor will it command media attention as anything resembling excellence. The entrepreneurial class in this country looks at the governing class in Washington today and sees a bunch of misfit incompetents who are determined to play starring roles in every nook and cranny of the economy.

And it is repulsive as well as disheartening. Maybe three of the 535 members of Congress have what it takes to keep a small business alive for a single fiscal quarter. We believe even fewer have what it takes to roll the dice and actually start one.

Yet they continue to pass laws and speak to reporters about all they are doing to create or save jobs. Yeah, right.

To people who are supercharged with the entrepreneurial spirit, the idea that the pudgy, bespectacled congressman — a self-described non-outdoorsman — could properly run an industry is just as outlandish as the idea that he could elevate over and “posterize” Lebron or Kobe. Taking risks and investing blood, sweat, and tears into a business that will — should it become successful — fall under the strict supervision of Washingtonians is simply a non-starter.

Any business idea, from the first day it is hatched, is nothing more than a series of cost-benefit analyses that the idea-holder either acts on or passes. Sometimes the first decision is to forget the idea. Sometimes the first decision is to move ahead and invest some cash. Perhaps a few million cost-benefit analyses later you might have Microsoft or Home Depot or ESPN. Or you might have Bill’s Plumbing or Johnson’s Quality Homes or a café or an electrical wholesaler, and so on. And those businesses still operate on a constant stream of risk-reward decisions. In the business world, there is no neutral gear.