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Saturday,
May 21, 2011 On Newt
Gingrich
At some point Republicans are going to have to choose a candidate who can
win the presidency. Rush Limbaugh famously says that he would vote for Elmer
Fudd in preference to President Obama, and doubtless there are others of the
same persuasion, but the reality is that the Democrats will have a heavily
organized ground game to get the Democratic base to the polls. Republicans
will do the same. The election will be decided by voters, who, given the
choice between Barrack Obama and Elmer Fudd may just stay home; which would
probably mean Obama's reelection. Thus it behooves the Republicans to
nominate someone attractive enough to get people to the polls.
All the major Republican branches -- conservative, Tea Party,
"mainstream", country club, and frankly liberal -- need to understand this.
Obama's presidency has been a disaster, and that will turn off a number of
those who voted for him. Some of those will come out in anger to vote
against him, and they might even be angry enough to vote for Elmer Fudd; but
there will be many others who were looking for Hope and Change, didn't find
it, and need to be given some alternative they don't think they will be
ashamed of later.
Obama is vulnerable, and this has brought out many people with a variety
of motives. The Democratic political operatives obviously are motivated to
cripple potential Republican candidates, particularly those who have pulled
upsets on them in the past. Newt Gingrich is one of those: the 1994 election
which gave the House back to the Republicans after years in the wilderness
was led in large part by Newt Gingrich, who became Speaker, and thus was
identified to political operatives as a dangerous man. One should not be
surprised by attacks from all parts of the Democrat apparatus, including
from the party's media sympathizers. Newt ended the Democratic rule in the
House in a year in which few thought that could be done. It was widely
suspected that the Republicans would prevail in the Senate in 1994, but loss
of the House was a genuine shock to Democrat strategists. They have not
forgotten.
There have also been strong attacks on Newt from other quarters, some
surprising, some not. Some are simply political maneuvering. Becoming
President of the United States requires, among other qualities, a very
strong "fire in the belly", as the traditional phrase goes; those with
insufficient resolve can be eliminated by intimidation or simply worn down.
Political campaigns are as stressful as any human experience with the
possible exception of military combat, and it generally goes on for a long
time. Some of the attacks on Gingrich are clearly from operatives backing
some other Republican candidate, and are largely designed to get him into a
defensive stance.
None of this is a strong argument for Newt Gingrich as a presidential
candidate. Few Presidents have come to office from the House of
Representatives, and the qualities that make for good legislative leaders
are in general not the same as those which make a good President. Of course
there are exceptions. Abraham Lincoln had no previous executive experience
(and not much in either the Federal or Illinois legislatures). Barrack Obama
has no previous executive experience. In general, though, America's strong
Presidents have come from soldiers and governors, even if this is not the
only route.
Peggy Noonan has joined the conversation about Newt in her Wall Street
Journal article "A Week of Shocks but Few Surprises", (Link)
(WSJ
Link).
Everyone knew Newt Gingrich was combustible, that he
tended to blow things up, including, periodically, himself. He was
impulsive, living proof that people confuse "a good brain" with "good
judgment." He had bad judgment, which is why he famously had a hundred ideas
a day and only 10 were good. He didn't know the difference and needed
first-rate people around to tell him. But the best didn't work with him
anymore, because he was unsteady, unreliable, more likely to be taken with
insight-seizures than insights.
I wouldn't say that, but she has a point. Newt has always
had a very great deal of the Great College Professor in his makeup. The mark
of the great teacher is that when a student asks a question the great
professor answers not the question that the student asked, but the one that
the prof thinks ought to have been asked. That makes for great classes. It
does not make for great politics, and Miss Noonan is quite correct in
pointing out that being really smart is not the same as having great
judgment. Judgment generally comes from practice, particularly from
executive experience. Judgment is the ability to deal with problems and
crises without committing yourself to a disastrous course of action. Those
with great judgment do not always set a great course of action, and often do
not know the right course of action: great judgment can let one to get past
the problem while still searching for the final solution; to get on with
what has to be done without knowing the final answer, but also without
closing off the best action. General Eisenhower is an example of that. Of
course really great judgment includes the ability to see past the immediate
problem, to see the goal and steadfastly move toward it. It's rare.
President Reagan had that quality. He was never the smartest man in the
room, but he was often capable of discerning who was, or which ideas would
lead to the best course of action -- and do that day after day. He made some
great mistakes, but he also ended the Cold War without the kind of violent
ending most of the Cold Warriors feared. The death throes of the USSR might
well have brought back the end of civilization, at least in the northern
hemisphere.
I would not say that Newt always tends to blow things up, or
that he has bad judgment; but I will agree that he is far better in the role
of advisor than as the boss. In the aerospace industry there is the post of
"Chief Scientist". The simplest description of the job is that everyone in a
project including the Chief Engineer must listen to the Chief Scientist, but
they don't have to follow the advice. They do have to consider it. I wish we
had a similar post in the White House. Chief Political Philosopher? In any
event, I would far rather see Newt in that job than as President.
Incidentally, I'd rather have that post than be President. It takes a
certain frame of mind to want to sit in the worry seat, and a lot of stamina
and endurance to be there day after day for years.
I won't comment on stories about Newt's personal life.
Peggy Noonan concludes that Newt's campaign is ended before
it starts. That may well be in the sense that he has any chance of winning
the nomination. It doesn't make him irrelevant, and he's generally the
smartest guy in the room no matter the size of the room. Think of him as the
Chief Political Philosopher of the United States: candidates don't have to
take his advice, but they would all do well to listen to him. When he asks
questions, they ought to be considered.
On Immigration
From my mail:
more Gingrich!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/
us-usa-campaign-gingrich-idUSTRE74C3UV20110519
He's advocating amnesty now.
Time for you to admit you're wrong about him. And
no, that does not mean hemming and hawing and talking vaguely about how
maybe he has a point. He does not have a point. It is entirely within DC's
power to enforce the law and make it unacceptably difficult for them to
remain here; that DC does not is plain treason, and anybody enabling and
supporting such treason is going to get caught in the crossfire when the
shooting starts. Amnesty is the best way to trigger that.
They are invaders and will be treated as such if
this country actually has any future at all. They all must go.
I don't know what it is that I am supposed to have been
wrong about, and this interview doesn't change it. What Newt said:
Gingrich was asked a question on a different
hot-button issue -- immigration -- on Thursday in Iowa, the Midwestern
state with a key early contest in the race for his party's presidential
nomination.
He preceded his response by acknowledging
that he risked sparking another controversy.
Gingrich recounted how World War Two-era U.S.
draft boards chose who would serve in the military, saying a similar
system might help deal with the millions of immigrants living in the
United States illegally.
"Because I think we are going to want to find
some way to deal with the people who are here to distinguish between those
who have no ties to the United States, and therefore you can deport them
at minimum human cost, and those who, in fact, may have earned the right
to become legal, but not citizens," Gingrich said.
That is not my definition of amnesty; and it does raise a
question that must be answered. There are about 20 million illegal aliens
living in the United States. Suppose that Congress and the President decided
tomorrow that "they all must go." How would that come about? Merely
transporting Twenty Million People is a non-trivial task. Assume that of the
20 million aliens in the US, ten million will require transport of 1,000 km
(621 miles). That is ten billion passenger/kilometers. The total annual rail
passenger traffic in the US, including commuter travel, is about 17 billion
passenger/kilometers. They would have to be fed. Many would have medical
needs. While many of them could be transported by rail to the Mexican border
-- in boxcars? or must there be at least day coach transport? -- many would
have to go elsewhere, some to Latin America, but many to Asia and Africa,
and many to places that will refuse to accept them.
A non-trivial task, even assuming that we could identify
them all, and assuming there would be no expensive legal actions required:
just identify, apprehend, and transport. It would take an enormous budget to
accomplish.
Now add political realities. It's all very well to grab some
thug with a long criminal record and say "Enough! Out!" to the general
applause of a vast majority, but even then there are going to be problems
with the ACLU as well as various immigrant rights organizations. Assume that
it can be done: what fraction of the 20 million will that account for?
Of course advocates of amnesty or the dream act like to show
the example of a teenage girl brought to the US at age five, brought up to
speak English and assimilate to American customs, earning a high school
diploma with an A- average, and in general an all-American girl who ought to
be college bound. Or the young oriental boy with much the same record. We
don't have to concede that people with similar stories will be a very great
fraction of the 20 million, but it is not zero, and every one of those will
be paraded by the media as soon as apprehended. Who is going to throw Marie
into the boxcar headed for Tijuana?
Incidentally that is not a trivial question: an operation
this large will require a lot of police agents. Do we insist that they all
be capable of handcuffing teenagers and putting them on the train to the
border? Do we want a lot of people with that attitude to have police power?
And what of illegals who have joined the Armed Forces? Veterans? Active duty
soldiers? An operation this large may well require action from the Legions:
will they pay more attention to the orders of their officers or the appeals
of their comrades? Of course that's a silly question, but my correspondent
did talk about crossfire and punishing treason, which probably means civil
war, and the Legions, both Regulars and various reserves and militias and
National Guard are certainly not going to be idle while that happens.
But suppose that all the questions of how to do it are
answered, and there is magically a black box with a button: push the button
and all 20 million of the illegal immigrants will be magically teleported to
their country of origin. If we took a national referendum on whether or not
to push that button, what would be the outcome?
It's no good saying that conservatives ought not think about
such matters. Of course they must. The problem of the illegals amongst us
will not go away simply because we don't think about it.
Note, incidentally, that Newt distinguishes between the
right to be a legal resident and citizenship. This is not brought up in most
"amnesty" discussions, but it should be. Citizens have rights, including the
right to sponsor other immigrants. The Supreme Court has held that illegal
immigrants have rights very similar if not identical to citizens, but that
is not the plain language of the Constitution. A sane immigration policy
will make that distinction -- including entitlements.
I am not going to "solve" the illegal immigrant problem
here, but I will say that denouncing as "amnesty" anything other than a
policy of 'deport them all and deport them now' is not useful. We aren't
going to deport them all, and no Congress or President will do that, nor
could even if it were thought desirable. The United States is not going to
erect detention camps nor will we herd people into boxcars. We can't
even get the southern border closed. Despite President Obama's mocking
speech, we have not built the security fence mandated a long time ago. We
probably could get Congress to approve a moat and alligators, although there
are likely more effective means. We can and should insist on closing the
borders. That we can and must do. It won't be easy or simple, but it's going
to be a lot easier than deporting 20 million illegals. Get the borders
closed. We can all agree on that.
That leaves the problem of the illegal aliens amongst us. We
can and should do more to enforce employment laws; but do we really want
police coming around to demand "your papers" from our gardeners and fry
cooks and homemakers? For if "your papers, please" becomes common practice,
there will be demands for equality; for not profiling; for equal opportunity
harassment -- but you get the idea. Think about what goes on in airports.
Every time we bring up immigration policy, someone will
bring up Angela and Maria and Alexa and Chanying, charming young ladies
illegally brought to the United States as children, all speaking
perfect English and thoroughly assimilated into the American Way of Life,
none with a criminal record, and now looking to the future. They will also
bring up Felipe and Ramon and Sergei, all young men with flawless records,
all brought here illegally when small children, and all willing and eager to
join the Armed Forces (and perhaps some of them already have); and it will
be demanded that we say what is to be done with them. Those making the
demand fully understand that there will be no consensus, but there will
certainly not be a majority in favor of putting them on an airplane back to
their country of origin.
Of course when that happens we ought to bring up the others,
the career criminals with long rap sheets, and insist that the amnesty
advocates tell us that they would do with these. And perhaps, perhaps, there
will come a time when there is an actual serious discussion of the subject,
and we can come up with policies and tactics that have a chance of working
and of actually being adopted.
But we will never get there so long as bringing up the
subject for discussion makes you a traitor.
==============
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