BENJAMIN WACHS: In Gingrich, the statesman vies with the politician

I often wish America had the kind of leader that Newt Gingrich thinks he is.

I’m not talking about the actual Newt Gingrich, of course: a man with so little character that he’d leave two wives on their sickbeds, impeach a president for adultery while committing adultery, and say that the best way to win an election is to accuse your opponent of treason. The Newt Gingrich who demands civility in presidential debates is the same man who ushered in a new era of dirty campaigning.

Giving executive power to a man like that is practically a suicide note.

He claims that it’s all better now because he’s converted to Catholicism. I’m not surprised; only God could possibly forgive him. And God doesn’t vote.

But the politician Newt thinks himself to be has something important to say.
When Gingrich says western civilization is steadily being eroded, he’s absolutely right. Gingrich makes a full-throated defense of what we stand to lose, steeped in classicism and historical perspective. We should use our history and traditions, from Socrates to Locke to Rawls, to rigorously support western culture today in the face of its many enemies. I wish more politicians would make that defense, instead of pretending that people who know something about western culture are elitists.

The full-throated nature of the defense is right: Cultures that don’t stand up for themselves don’t thrive. The trouble is that Gingrich has the details all wrong. Indefinite detention without trial and unlimited secret campaign contributions to politicians are far more of a threat to western culture in American than anything “the terrorists” have yet come up with. And it is absurdly hypocritical to demand more of God in public life when the Catholic church hides pedophiles from the civil authorities.

We defend Western culture by making it work for the people who live in it, standing up for its ideals, and making that attractive to the rest of the world, not by fear and paranoia and clannishness. The statesman New Gingrich wants to be knows that lines must be vigorously drawn; the politician Newt is stands on the other side.

This happens a lot. Recently explaining why he’s proposed making a moon base by 2020 one of the pillars of his administration ... an idea so far off the radar it’s like radar hasn’t been invented yet ... Gingrich explained: “The reason you have to have a bold and large vision is you don’t arouse the American nation with trivial, bureaucratic, rational objectives.”

This is profoundly right and profoundly important.

Two trends have weighed America down for the last 20 years. One of them is the rising income inequality that makes the idea of one-person-one-vote good in principle but fail in practice. The other is that a majority of our politicians think such little thoughts at a time when America should dream such big dreams.

Americans are a people of manifest destiny. We want nothing more than to use our freedoms to submit to a worthy cause. But since Reagan, what have we been called to do? In the 1990s, it was invest in IPOs; after 2001, it was shop; during the last decade we were told to buy homes. Only a few of us, easily (and immorally) forgotten, were called to war.

As for the rest of us: Never has so little been asked of a people waiting to do so much.
Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric made him seem like a transformational leader, but his record has always been one of incrementalism — and now he’s doubling down. Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachman — all want to make big transformations, but only to move us backward. Gingrich is right: To rouse this nation you need a bold vision of the future.

But that’s the ideal Gingrich, the way he thinks of himself in his head. In real life, egomaniacs are disqualified. Giving Newt the nuclear launch codes is like playing Russian roulette with an epileptic.

But oh, do I wish we had the Gingrich of Newt’s imagination running for president.