The November 2012 presidential election will be a decisive event in the future political economy of the United States. Given the disproportionate power of the president in the political market-place, and given the tipping point in political economy that will be resolved, one way or another, by 2016, this presidential election is no less important than that of 1860. Will the United States conform to the will of its Founders as a constitutional republic endowed with a limited government of strictly enumerated powers? Or will it shred the rest of its already ragged constitutional parchment, and pursue the progressive route to an unconstrained Leviathan?
By his first term’s record, we know full well that Barack Obama will lead a progressive assault on limited government, given a second term opportunity. During the first two years of his first term, aided by a progressive Congress, the President has bribed significant electoral constituencies to support him in his re-election bid. With approximately 50 per cent of all eligible voters already feeding at the federal trough, it will take great statesmanship for any G.O.P. candidate to win the Electoral College. Yet win that College the G.O.P must, if the constitutional republic is to be preserved and protected through the debt crisis storm that hovers on the horizon.
A statesman, in my definition, is a person well-educated in the history of his nation, a polished communicator, well-versed in the art of politics, willing to place the interests of the nation above his own personal advancement and endowed with the executive ability to lead a polarized nation. Among the Founders of a small nation, George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson epitomized these qualities, each with his own personal balance.
From a current population of 300 million souls, not a single statesman of such quality has yet emerged to show any interest in running on behalf of the G.O.P. in the 2012 presidential elections. Perhaps the United States is now incapable of growing such giants, I do not know. Surely they do not bestride the political spectrum as they clearly did during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
What we see instead among the leading G.O.P. contestants are deeply flawed individuals. Newton Gingrich is a serial adulterer, who demonstrated a serious failure of leadership as Speaker of the House of Representatives, and significant improprieties in the conduct of his personal finances. An opportunistic self-seeker, Gingrich almost certainly would follow the progressive path marked out by George W. Bush, were he to win election.
Mitt Romney is a smooth-talking nonentity who enjoyed a progressive governorship in Massachusetts. He has learned nothing from the health-care debacle that he imposed upon that state, a debacle that paved the way for Obamacare. He appears to have no grasp of history, no sense of the political economic crisis that confronts the nation.
Sarah Palin is a beautiful woman who would turn many a male eye in a presidential election. She is well-meaning and hard-working, and does understand the nature of the Founding to a degree that the others do not. But she perfomed poorly as Governor of Alaska and abandoned the tiller when the storm-clouds began to form. She lacks the gravitas both intellectual and political, to lead a great nation, and the political finesse to carry the baton of the constitutional republic on its next crucially important lap.
The rest of the field, announced and close to announcing, is quite frankly no where near presidential timbre. Those such who preen themselves on the edge of the battlefield would do their nation and their political party a great favor by recognizing their irredeemable inadequacies and withdrawing from the race.
Among those with serious political experience, there is but one candidate of true merit. Unfortunately, Jeb Bush carries his younger brother’s surname, and that may be sufficient to disqualify him from political consideration. But Jeb Bush showed how to govern well the great State of Florida. Unlike his younger brother, he does understand the nature of the Founding and the crisis of political economy that now grips this vulnerable nation.
In my judgment, Jeb Bush has some, though not all, the requisite characteristics of statesmanship that this country so desperately needs. In the interest of his nation, he should throw his hat into the ring.
Charles Rowley's Blog 