LIBERADIO(!)

Tonight was the second serving of Vanderbilt’s IMPACT Symposium. Guest: Newt Gingrich.

This time, Mary and I arrived early enough to participate in the media availability prior to the lecture. That was certainly an interesting experience, and Mary got what I expect to be good audio of the entire thing. What we do with the audio is TBD. I hope it winds up in shape that we can make it available somehow.

During the media availability the former Speaker of the House teased his topics for the evening and took questions. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of Vanderbilt media outlets represented. In fact, they were more inquisitive than our local media outlets. One person meekly raised the issue of Newt’s “past” (code words for his revelations on Dobson that he was in the middle of an affair during the Clinton impeachment) and asked him if he thought the personal lives of candidates were fair game, to which Newt curtly replied, “No.” Newt also suggested that it was the media that was interested, not voters. He said the basic criterion voters should use is, “Would this person make a good president?” I wanted to follow the question with one of my own: “If marriage is to be a political issue, shouldn’t the responsible voter be interested in the actions of candidates as related to the institution?” Unfortunately, enough people were in front of me in the question queue that we ran out of time.

But that wasn’t the reason the congressman was here. He was here to discuss these three issues:

• Unprecedented Change Newt claims that the next 25 years will be a time of change unlike anything we’ve seen since the Civil War. He asserts that the rate of change (backed up by some research he cited) will exceed the amount of change created by either world war or the Great Depression.
• Public Sector Bureaucracy vs. Private Sector Innovation This issue is part of the bedrock of Republicanism, although I admired Gingrich’s posturing because he didn’t launch into an anti-tax tirade; rather, he took several opportunities to laud technological innovation and propose how it might be brought to bear to modernize America’s government bureaucracy, which he sees as fundamentally unchanged since 1965. He is taken with the notion of tax-free prizes to be issued to enterprising individuals or teams for such things as getting to Mars and back, designing a hydrogen car, designing a 1000 mpg petroleum-based car. Rather than creating a NASA-like bureaucracy with red tape constraining innovation, he would seek to tap unbridled innovation from prestige-seeking entrepreneurs. He likened the Mars mission to the America’s Cup. I was also impressed that he took care not to position himself as rabidly anti-government. In the media availability, when pressed by Mary, he distinguished privatization from using private sector techniques (e.g., metrics, technology) to improve government bureaucracy.
• Dangerous Times Finally, Mr. Gingrich thinks we are not collectively aware enough of the dangers confronting us in the modern era. Using the example of a recent story about a car bomb where children were used in a car to get it through a checkpoint and then subsequently left to die in an explosion, Gingrich is of the opinion that we are not ready for that level of murderousness. His fearmongering is not quite as pernicious as Dick Cheney’s, but it does lend itself to a demonstration of patriotism via partisanship. I think anecdotal evidence is the worst kind of evidence, but I also think that the world is a dangerous place. And I think that American and the great modern societies can work together to face down major terrorist threats. There are still a great many lessons to be drawn from 9/11, and we might never know whether we’re learning them. Do we curtail civil liberties rather than improving information sharing among our intelligence agencies using Mr. Gingrich’s technological innovation? Are the two mutually exclusive? There are so many ways to confront the dangers Gingrich sees on the road ahead, and we all need to drive carefully.

Mary is certain that Gingrich is running for president. He claims that he will not make a final announcement until fall, when he will help to conduct a series of workshops — all available online and to the public — to address some of the major policy issues included in his remarks. Pencil in Sep. 30th on your calendar. His campaign slogan is likely to be, “Real change requires real change.”

There were a few moments of partisan hackery and snark, but, like Lou Dobbs, Gingrich spent quite a bit of time decrying the level of debate in our country. I have to express some respect that both men actually spent most of their time attempting to elevate the level of debate. Both evenings have been primarily a celebration of ideas and a service to the community.

Tomorrow night: Harold Ford, Jr.