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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-idUSTRE74C3UV20110519He'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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