The “Id Of Newt”: A Seminar On Brain Science
On Dec. 14, with Newt Gingrich still leading in most polls of Iowa but a softness in his numbers beginning to show, the former House Speaker made the unorthodox choice to take time off campaigning to deliver a seminar on brain science in the liberal university town of Iowa City.
“Today,” Gingrich declared to an auditorium of students, “we are on the cusp of an explosion of new science that will create new opportunities in health, agriculture, energy and materials technology.” But, he argued, we must first reform the bureaucracy hindering unfettered science. Perhaps — but it was hard to argue with Politico’s conclusion that giving the seminar in the midst of a hard-fought primary was politically “puzzling.” At worst it was suicidal.
The best guide to understanding the reasons Gingrich took time off the campaign trail to teach a brain-science seminar — and also, in the words of Mitt Romney, to understanding his “zany” side — is Gingrich’s first book, “Window of Opportunity.”
Published in 1984 when he was the three-term member of Congress from Georgia (and, the cover notes, “chairman of the Congressional Space Caucus”), the book is an extended meditation on how the bureaucratic welfare state is holding back America from a bright future of space tourism and a poverty-ending computer revolution. It was coauthored by Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne, and sci-fi/fantasy author David Drake and blurbed by President Reagan, who called it “a source of new hope for building an Opportunity Society that sparks the best in each of us and permits us to chart a better future for our children.” (Drake, for his part, is the author of nearly 100 novels, with titles like “The Dragon Lord” and “Skyripper.”)
The striking thing about “Window of Opportunity” (yes, I read the whole thing) are the continuities in Gingrich’s thought and style between 1984 and the present. The constant hyperbole is there (“dramatically,” “literally,” “enormously”). Gingrich’s tendency to speak in world-historical terms, coupled with authoritative-sounding and astoundingly detailed discussions of technology, is there.
“Our generation of Americans must decide whether to lead mankind into freedom, productivity, and peace or whether we will preside over the slow decay of mankind into a world of terrorism and tyranny,” he writes at one point. At another, he dives into the minutiae of Reagan’s so-called Star Wars missile defense plan:
Particle beams and laser solutions (directed energy weapons) offer some real advantages over conventional — gun and missile — weapons because directed energy weapons hit their targets at the speed of light, making aiming much easier and permitting a single weapon to hit multiple targets in series.
In “Window of Opportunity,” Gingrich waxes enthusiastic about children as young as eighth graders jumping into the new information economy and making money using computers, echoing his talk this year about getting kids to do janitorial work.
This book is where Gingrich’s abiding interest in futurism first bloomed into public view. He invokes classics of the genre such as Alvin Toffler’s “The Third Wave,” Peter Drucker’s “The Age of Discontinuities,” and John Naisbett’s “Megatrends.” Some of Gingrich’s predictions sound reasonably prescient with the benefit of hindsight. “Many of our grandchildren will do much of their work from their homes by connecting keyboards to their telephones to write letters, books, and purchase orders,” he writes.
Other predictions, not so much:
- “If we are going to retain our high standard of living and compete in the world marketplace, Americans must give priority to the development of high-value industries such as space tourism and advanced health care.”
- “The space station will provide opportunities for a variety of new commercial and scientific projects: the first stable base for long-term production of … ultralight, very large structures that can be built with extremely thin materials in a zero-gravity environment but would be crushed by Earth’s gravity.”
- “This much flashier space vehicle would theoretically be capable of research and development missions, hypersonic flight, and even rescue missions to the Moon — but it must be piggy-backed into orbit on the shuttle, and it will be piloted by a single man in an open cockpit, protected only by an anti-micrometeorite suit supplied by the lowest bidder.”
- “The third-generation shuttle of the year 2020 should offer yet another magnitude drop [in the price of flying cargo to space] about $10 a kilogram. At that point, a typical couple might take a honeymoon trip into space for around $15,000.”
In fairness, there’s still a few years left for America to achieve the $15,000 moon honeymoon. If Gingrich is elected in 2012 and reelected in 2016, maybe he can make it happen.
By: Justin Elliott, Salon, December 27, 2011
George H. W. Bush’s Endorsement May Not Help Mitt Romney
It didn’t get a lot of attention when it happened, but former President George H. W. Bush recently tapped former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as his choice for the Republican presidential nomination.
The former president, who has largely been out of the limelight over the last 12 years, told the Houston Chronicle he thought “Romney is the best choice for us” because he was “not a bomb-thrower,” which most reasonable people would understand to be a not-so-veiled shot at former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Bush’s dislike of Gingrich, who was in the room at Andrews Air Force Base when the tax hike was negotiated but who then opposed the deal, is well known. The former president and some of his key aides still regard Gingrich’s behavior during the whole business as a betrayal and an act of disloyalty. But that does not completely explain the former president’s preference for Romney.
The former president’s advisors quickly pointed out that Bush’s comments did not constitute an “official endorsement” but any conservative who thinks Romney is the best man to carry the flag forward into the fall campaign may now want to think twice. Though he is beloved as a former president, there are many on the right who remember how Bush’s failure to keep his promise not to raise taxes s almost destroyed the modern GOP.
Back in 1988, when he was running far behind another former Massachusetts governor, Michael Dukakis, in the race for president, Bush promised that, if elected, he would govern just like Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, he came up short—not only raising taxes but embarking on a regulatory assault on the U.S. economy that helped to create a downturn late in his first and only term. In short order he proved that he was no conservative, as those who were suspicious of him from the start had long maintained.
Romney too has been the subject of conservative suspicions. His one term as governor of Massachusetts was not exactly a triumph of limited government. His signature accomplishment, the rewriting of the state’s healthcare laws and the imposition of a universal mandate, is seen by many as far too similar to Obamacare for anyone to be comfortable. Getting Bush 41’s approval for his presidential bid will only help reinforce those suspicions, especially as the all-important Iowa caucuses draw near.
By: Peter Roff, U. S. News and World Report, December 27, 2011
“Party Wrecker”: How Ron Paul Will Change the GOP in 2012
We haven’t even said goodbye to 2011, but I want to be first in line with my person of the year prediction for 2012: Ron Paul. I don’t think Paul is going to win the presidency, or even win the Republican nomination. But he’s going to come close enough to change the GOP forever.
Washington Republicans and political pundits keep depicting Paul as some kind of ideological mutation, the conservative equivalent of a black swan. They’re wrong.
Ask any historically-minded conservative who the most conservative president of the 20th Century was, and they’ll likely say Calvin Coolidge. No president tried as hard to make the federal government irrelevant. It’s said that Coolidge was so terrified of actually doing something as president that he tried his best not even to speak. But in 1925, Silent Cal did open his mouth long enough to spell out his foreign policy vision, and what he said could be emblazoned on a Ron Paul for President poster: “The people have had all the war, all the taxation, and all the military service they want.”
Small government conservatism, the kind to which today’s Republicans swear fealty, was born in the 1920s not only in reaction to the progressive movement’s efforts to use government to regulate business, but in reaction to World War I, which conservatives rightly saw as a crucial element of the government expansion they feared. To be a small government conservative in the 1920s and 1930s was, for the most part, to vehemently oppose military spending while insisting that the US never, ever get mired in another European war.
Even after World War II, Mr. Republican—Robert Taft—opposed the creation of NATO and called the Korean War unconstitutional. Dwight Eisenhower worked feverishly to scale back the Truman-era defense spending that he feared would bankrupt America and rob it of its civil liberties. Even conservative luminaries like William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater who embraced the global anti-communist struggle made it clear that they were doing so with a heavy heart. Global military commitments, they explained, represented a tragic departure from small government conservatism, a departure justified only by the uniquely satanic nature of the Soviet threat.
The cold war lasted half a century, but isolationism never left the conservative DNA. And when the Soviet Union collapsed, some of America’s most prominent conservative intellectuals—people like Irving Kristol, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Pat Buchanan—argued that the GOP should become the party of Coolidge and Taft once again. The Republican Congress of the 1990s bitterly opposed Bill Clinton’s wars in the Balkans, and Buchanan, running on an isolationist platform, briefly led the GOP presidential field in 1996. Even the pre-9/11 Bush administration was so hostile to increased military spending that the Weekly Standard called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign.
Given this history, it’s entirely predictable that in the wake of two disillusioning wars, a diminishing al Qaeda threat and mounting debt, someone like Ron Paul would come along. In Washington, Republican elites are enmeshed in a defense-industrial complex with a commercial interest in America’s global military footprint. But listen to Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh and see how often you hear them demanding that America keep fighting in Afghanistan, or even attack Iran. According to a November CBS News poll, as many Republicans said the U.S. should decrease its troop presence in Afghanistan as said America should increase it or keep it the same. In the same survey, only 22 percent of Republicans called Iran’s nuclear program “a threat that requires military action now” compared to more than fifty percent who said it “can be contained with diplomacy.” Almost three-quarters of Republicans said the U.S. should not try to change dictatorships to democracies.
There are certainly Republicans out there who support the Bush-Cheney neo-imperialist foreign policy vision. But they’re split among the top tier presidential candidates. Paul has the isolationists all to himself. Moreover, his two top opponents—Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich—not only back a big-government foreign policy agenda, but have periodically backed a big-government domestic agenda as well. In other words, they personify the argument at the heart of Paul’s campaign: that if you love a powerful Pentagon, you’ll end up loving other parts of the government bureaucracy as well.
Since the Iowa caucuses generally reward organization and passion, I suspect Paul will win them easily. That would likely propel him to a strong showing in libertarian New Hampshire. Somehow, I think Romney and the Republican establishment will find a way to defeat him in the vicious and expensive struggle that follows. But the dominant storyline at the Republican convention will be figuring out how to appease Paul sufficiently to ensure that he doesn’t launch a third party bid. And in so doing, the GOP will legitimize its isolationist wing in a way it hasn’t since 9/11.
In truth, the modern Republican Party has always been a house divided, pulled between its desire to crusade against evil abroad and its fear that that crusade will empower the evil of big government at home. In 2012, I suspect, Ron Paul will expose that division in a way it has not been exposed in a long time. And Republicans will not soon paper it over again.
By: Peter Beinart, The Daily Beast, December 27, 2011
“Yes Virginia, You Have A Problem”: Virginia’s Ballot-Access Debacle
Virginia will hold its Republican presidential primary on Super Tuesday (March 6), it would appear to be one of the more important contests. But the state’s unwise ballot-access laws have ensured that Virginia will be largely ignored.
By late Thursday, it looked as if Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry had collected the necessary signatures and would join Mitt Romney and Ron Paul on the Virginia GOP ballot. On Saturday morning, we learned otherwise.
Newt Gingrich will not appear on the Virginia presidential primary ballot, state Republican Party officials announced Saturday, after he failed to submit the required number of valid signatures to qualify.
The announcement was made on the Virginia Republican Party’s Twitter account. On Friday evening, the Republican Party of Virginia made a similar announcement for Governor Rick Perry of Texas.
Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, and Rick Santorum also came up short, which leaves Paul and Romney as the only GOP candidates whose names will appear on the primary ballot.
For Gingrich, this is a rather awkward setback. He expected to do very well in Virginia — Gingrich has, after all, lived in the state for many years — and assured supporters on Thursday that his name would be on the ballot. Complicating matters, the Gingrich campaign responded to the news by saying it would “pursue an aggressive write-in campaign,” not realizing that this is forbidden under Virginia election law.
Oops.
Making matters slightly worse, Gingrich’s campaign director posted an item to Facebook that said, “Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941: We have experienced an unexpected set-back, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action.”
Yes, after having been denied a ballot slot, Gingrich’s thoughts turned to Pearl Harbor. There’s a good reason I describe the disgraced former House Speaker as a lousy historian.
But this story is about more than just Gingrich’s failure. The larger point is that Virginia has ridiculous ballot-access laws, which will exclude five of the seven Republican presidential candidates from even appearing on the state’s ballot. If all seven had qualified, Virginia would have been home to a spirited contest — with candidates making many appearances, buying plenty of ads, and making lots of state-focused promises.
By: Steve Benen, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 26, 2011
Newt Praised Romneycare Before He Was Against It
From the WSJ’s use of the Internet comes a 2006 letter on the website of a former Newt Gingrich consulting company praising a then-new development in healthcare, the Massachusetts health care law – or, as it’s known today, Romneycare:
“The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system,” said an April 2006 newsletter published by Mr. Gingrich’s former consulting company, the Center for Health Transformation.
The two-page “Newt Notes” analysis, found online by The Wall Street Journal even though it no longer appears on the center’s website, continued: “We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100% insurance coverage for all Americans.”
Mr. Gingrich’s rise to the top of the field has come in part from his bashing Mr. Romney for engineering a state health-care expansion that became a model for President Barack Obama’s 2010 health law. “Your plan essentially is one more big-government, bureaucratic, high-cost system,” Mr. Gingrich told Mr. Romney during an October debate in Las Vegas. He said Mr. Romney was trying to solve Massachusetts’ health-care problems “from the top down.”
R.C. Hammond, a spokesman for Mr. Gingrich, said the April 2006 essay shouldn’t be read as an endorsement of Mr. Romney’s health plan. He noted that it raised several questions about the Massachusetts effort, including whether the plan would work in the state. “Being critical…isn’t endorsing it,” he said.
Mr. Hammond said the Newt Notes essay wasn’t written by Mr. Gingrich himself.
It is true that the “Newt notes” wasn’t totally sanguine about the Romney health care plan, and Gingrich – or whoever the author was – warned its success depended on how it played out. However, there were other interesting bits in the “Newt notes,” such as this, per the original letter, flagged by Andrew Kaczynski:
The Romney plan attempts to bring everyone into the system. The individual mandate requires those who earn enough to afford insurance to purchase coverage, and subsidies will be made available to those individuals who cannot afford insurance on their own. We agree strongly with this principle, but the details are crucial when it comes to the structure of this plan…While the Commonwealth’s plan will naturally endure tremendous scrutiny from those who assert that the law will not work as intended, Massachusetts leaders are to be commended for this bipartisan proposal to tackle the enormous challenge of finding real solutions for creating a sustainable health system.
By: Maggie Haberman, Politico, December 26, 2011
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