The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage

The Supreme Court's acceptance of a series of challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California's Proposition 8 presents a crucible moment for the conservative movement. I have long argued that it's in the Republican Party's interest to get on the right side of history and embrace gay marriage, which is after all inevitable. My argument is one of both political expediency and morality.

The Party of Lincoln was formed in opposition to a moral wrong in slavery. Granted, the GOP's opposition to the "peculiar institution" was at first an economic one, and later a pragmatic response to a crumbling Union. As Steven Speilberg's marvelous new movie makes clear, however, Lincoln and the so-called Radical Republicans made a moral case for slavery's abolition. In what has been a difficult year for the party I have always called home, this historic moment made me proud and underpinned my deep animosity towards those in the Party who now stand against the full human rights of another historically marginalized group of Americans.

Moreover, DOMA, which was passed by a Republican-led Congress and signed by Bill Clinton, violates conservatives' core belief in federalism. Calls for a constitutional amendment to this effect equate with the highest levels of hypocrisy. Let's assume that the Supreme Court strikes down DOMA on equal protection (14th Amendment) grounds and allows Proposition 8 to stand. This would enable states to address an issue, namely marriage, that it previously and rightly governed. While acknowledging a federal interest given the benefits due to widows and windowers of deceased spouses, this stance is more consistent with conservatives' opposition to Roe v. Wade.

If I could take the abortion parallel one step further, however, I might suggest that if the act is morally and constitutionally indefensible (it is, im my mind), the same reasoning applies to federal and state restrictions on the right to marry for same-sex couples. My hope is that Justice Kennedy and perhaps Chief Justice Roberts side with the Court's liberal wing and right a historic wrong with the strike of a pen.

Before turning to the political angle, I would like to make one more moral claim. Empirical evidence suggests that both parties should elevate and embrace two-parent families for the purpose of raising children who will be lifelong contributors to our country's economic and civic sectors. It is agnostic about the gender mix of parents. It seems that those who support strong family values should embrace marriage, the bedrock of two-parent families, regardless of the couple's sexual preference.

Now on to the expediency argument. Republicans are getting clobbered among young people because their views towards immigration, abortion (only the extreme views of Akin, Mourdock, and too many others), and yes, immigration, don't square with the diverse, open-minded Millennial culture. If the GOP and its candidates don't evolve on this issue and others, they will continue to lose national elections and see their ranks maginalized to rural America and the Deep South.

Whereas Republicans may have once profited from their opposition to gay marriage (the empirical evidence is mixed), it is now clearly an albatross. The party will be better off once the issue is settled and it can return to its core message of limited government, strong families, peace through strength, and a healthy civil society.

Like many of the groups who twice constituted a winning electoral coalition for President Obama, gay Americans, or at least a subset of them, are ripe for the picking for Republicans willing to compete for every vote. By taking a rigid stance against their very being, too many gay Americans are forced to vote against an economic agenda they would otherwise embrace in order to realize their full civil liberties.

Former Republican Solictor General Ted Olsen is lead counsel in the challenge to Proposition 8 alongside his Democratic opponent in Bush v. Gore. Olsen's brave stance gives me hope that other Republicans and conservatives will experience a similar epiphany. Are you willing to join us in embracing morality, constitutional and family values, and the most prudent political path forward for the Grand Old Party?

The Parties Versus the People

I'd like to leverage this brief interlude between the respective party conventions to review an important new book by former Congressman Mickey Edwards (R-OK) titled The Parties Versus the People: How to Make Republicans and Democrats into Americans. Like Edwards, I remain a proud member of the GOP and its ever-shrinking moderate wing. However, our commitments to our country transcend allegiances to any private organization, political parties in particular.

Edwards' arguments bear consideration 10 weeks from a pivotal presidential election. A close shave for the incumbent or his capable opponent still seems probable, and the victor's ability to govern will be constrained by the same forces that have paralyzed Washington for the past quarter century. He is right to blame political parties for the poisoned political atmosphere, and unlike Dionne, Mann and Ornstein, and others, he rightly assigns bipartisan blame. Polarization per se, Edwards suggests, is not the problem, but instead the parties' dominance of our electoral and governing institutions.

His list of prescriptions is long, and I don't agree with each line item, but I do support open-integrated primaries like those employed in Louisiana, Washington, and California, where the top two primary finishers regardless of party advance to the general election. They need not be from the two major parties, and both candidates may be of the same party. I predict this would go a long way in sending the "wing nuts" to the exits and electing moderates representative of the "mushy middle" that characterizes the vast bulk of the voting population.

I also concur that our current campaign finance regime is broken, a product of laws with good intentions, but flawed reverberations, and contradictory court rulings. He cites my friend Curtis Gans of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, who advocates for the removal of limits on what individual candidates may raise from people, and restricting donations to all external agents (parties, Super PACs, etc.). My concerns about about the current regime have more to do with the perpetual money chase than fears about corruption or the appearance thereof. Moreover, by pushing political money from the most accountable (the candidate) to the least accountable (interest groups, 501c3s, and SuperPACs), negativity is the norm, driving people (prospective office holders and voters alike) from the political process altogether.

I also embrace Edwards' call for nonpartisan redistricting reform. It remains ridiculous that professional politicians select their voters, bastardizing the very definition of democracy. Additionally, neutrally drawn districts would produce more competitive contests, bringing more citizens out to the polls, and opening the door for more moderate candidates willing to reach across the aisle and work with members of the other party to tackle the pressing issues of the day.

Edwards falls short in a clear path for citizens to pursue these reforms and others. In many ways, his writing is directed towards Beltway insiders, and my hope is that they carry around dog-eared copies of this important book. He does recommend that the rest of us take back our government from two private clubs (the Dems and the GOP) through citizen initiatives, and lists the states where this is achievable. Unfortunately, Illinois is not on this list, so we are left with only the ballot box and grass roots organizations pressuring those in Springfield and City Hall.

As our collective gaze turns from Tampa to Charlotte, Edwards' prescriptions to rescue our democracy loom large. The issues articulated by an impressive A-list of Republican officials this past week are real and must be addressed immediately, but short of the structural changes Edwards embraces, dysfunction and stalemate seem the more likely scenarios regardless of who wins the Obama-Romney prize fight.

Super PAC Switch-a-roo

President Obama's recent about-face in embracing the Super PAC created by former advisors in support of his reelection bid, Priorities USA, is the latest in a long line of actions by a man who supposedly transcended traditional politics. While he has always talked the talk of a progressive reformer, he has walked the walk of cut-throat Chicago politics, the world's second oldest profession, and not all that different from the first.

Obama began his career by kicking each of his opponents, the incumbent included, off the ballot. He was a back bencher in the Illinois Senate, dreaming of a run for Chicago mayor, and avoiding votes of controversial bills by conveniently voting "present." Obama was then conveniently crowned as the Democratic nominee for retiring U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald's seat, when opposition research sunk his top two opponents. His Republican opponent was forced to fall on his own sword, and the fall election became little more than a joke.

Obama's Senate cakewalk paved the path for a presidential run less than 200 days into his Capitol career. He effectively created a counter-narrative to his murky ties to the Chicago machine and its corrupt underworld. Co-chairing Blago's gubernatorial campaign, sharing lot lines with Tony Rezko, and "paling around" with the remnants of Weather Underground didn't equate with a new kind of politics that transcended the red-blue divide. Hope, change and the color purple replaced the "where's mine?" mentality of Chicago pols. A second memoir titled after the sermon of a pastor he would also later throw under the bus completed the transformation.

Simply stated, Barack Obama now belonged to the ages. But the poetry of the historic 2008 campaign yielded to the prose of governing, a task for which he was utterly ill-prepared. A pledge that the failed stimulus package would keep unemployment below 8% proved a painful lie. The so-called Economic Recovery Act represented pent-up liberal demands dating back to the Great Society, but the "crisis is a terrible thing to waste" mentality only grew our national debt and stalled the recovery. Obama has already borrowed more than the previous 43 presidents combined. His health care legislation was even more unpopular, and the Ponzi scheme it is premised upon lurks in the shadows of his presumptive second term.

This narrative leads us to his recent about-face on campaign finance, consistent with his 2008 flip-flop during the general election where he refused federal matching funds and effectively blew up the public finance system he supposedly championed. He of course scolded the Supreme Court in person during his 2010 State of the Union Address for the Citizens United decision which relaxed limitations on corporate spending during campaigns. This conduct was unbecoming of a president, and the conservative wing of the Court, the Chief Justice aside, now boycotts an important national ritual.

The midterm shellacking delivered to the President and has party proved the power of the new campaign finance regime, and the White House talked out of both sides of its mouth as it backed the Disclosure Act while also creating a Super PAC of its own. Last week we received word that the President's Cabinet would attend fundraisers and further propel a vehicle the President supposedly abhorred. Apparently the Billion Dollar Man needs a little help across the finish line, and isn't afraid to conveniently embrace a strange bedfellow.

The President would hereafter be wise to take note that his White House is made of glass, and the current occupant should be careful not to throw rocks.

Affordable care and freedom of conscience

The Obama Administration made a major miscalculation in mandating that faith-based institutions provide employees with health care plans that cover contraceptives. Their walk back yesterday is only half-hearted, for the insurance companies that offer coverage to their employees still need to offer contraceptives "free of charge." The reality, of course, is there is no such thing as a free lunch, and these costs will be absorbed via premiums paid by the same faith-based institutions and the rest of employers and individuals who rely upon these companies for health insurance.

It should come as no surprise that the Orwellian Affordable Care Act infringes on freedom of conscience. At it's very core, it represents a government takeover of the remaining free market elements of our nation's health care industry. The scary thing is, we haven't seen anything yet, because while the taxes that finance this beast have already taken effect, it is a ponzi scheme that formally becomes law in 2014, when President Obama will presumably be mid-way through his second term and quacking like a lame duck (or back here in Chicago if Mitt Romney can get his act together).

Now, I am admittedly a cafeteria Catholic. I attend mass only sporadically, and while I practice much of the church's teachings, I happen to disagree with its opposition to gay marriage, its unwillingness to make exceptions on abortion for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, and yes, even on contraception.

I am, however, a constitutional scholar, and freedom of conscience is firmly embedded in the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof..."). The Supreme Court has allowed infringement on the free exercise of religion when the government has a compelling interest. It has forbidden trespassing on religious beliefs.

The question here is whether the Obama Administration has a compelling interest in mandating that faith-based institutions violate their core convictions to offer birth control to employees. Given that birth control is widely available for free at government-supported organizations like Planned Parenthood, and also accessible by prescription over the counter for a fee, this does not constitute a compelling interest in my mind.

Instead, it represents liberal dogma, and is emblematic of an insular administration staffed by secular progressives that thinks it knows better than the God-fearing people who cling to guns and religion. Obamacare must be repealed and replaced, and the administration that created this monstrosity must be limited to a single term.

Coming Apart

Charles Murray's latest book, Coming Apart, is a must read for concerned citizens of this great country. His tome charts a widening chasm between the upper and lower classes, who have always been separated economically, but now occupy different zip codes and cultural patterns.

He uses Belmont and Fishtown as socioeconomic foils. The former is inhabited by the new middle-to-upper class, who complete college, find work as professionals, get and stay married, raise children, attend church on Sundays, and perpetuate a positive cycle for their posterity.

Fishtown, on the other hand, is populated by what was formerly known as the working class. Here, high school graduation isn't a given, marriage often ends in divorce, or increasingly, never occurs. Out-of-wedlock childbearing is the norm, steady work is as elusive as the ambition to find it, and the prevailing secularism leaves starving souls.

It wasn't always this way. Murrary uses JFK's assassination in 1963 as an artificial turning point, arguing that four things have always accounted for American exceptionalism: marriage, religiosity, industriousness, and honesty. Since 1963, Belmont has walked the traditional walk, but Fishtown has left these values at the proverbial pier, leaving devasting economic consequences ashore.

Unlike Murray's earlier books, Losing Ground and The Bell Curve, he focuses exclusively on white Americans in Coming Apart. While he argues and later demonstrates that the aforementioned trends bridge skin color and ethnicity, he manages to remove the racial baggage that too often dominates the culture wars.

You may recall defamed former Democratic presidential contender John Edwards' admonition about "two Americas." Murray would agree with this surface statement. However, Edwards didn't point to cultural renewal as a means of bonding these strangers in the night. Murray comes up empty, too, other than his argument that the residents of Belmont should openly encourage the fellow citizens of Fishtown to model their good behavior.

Murray is labeled a conservative by the MSM, but he is at heart a libertarian, thus the crux of his failure to offer plausible paths forward in conquering the problems he so ably illustrates. As a lover of liberty, libertarianism admittedly has great appeal, but it stands incapable of confronting society's ills, because like liberalism, it discounts culture. Just as $1.5 trillion of annual federal and state spending on social programs have failed to ensure an equitable distribution of wealth, laissez faire leaves the masses begging for bread.

Both David Brooks and Clarence Page, in their review of the book, spoke of potential bonding experiences between residents of Belmont and Fishtown through mandatory national service, whether in the armed forces or Americorps. While this would admittedly help us understand one another better, it wouldn't address what continues to tear at the seams of our society.

The answer must come from within, but government isn't helpless in this cultural rebuilding effort. Both sides of the aisle need to embrace the two-parent family as the best predictor of the next generation's success. Policies should encourage wedlock and discourage illegitimacy.

Faith-based institutions have long provided charitable services in this country, and are the great mobilizers of civic participation in this country. They need more than the half-hearted embrace given to them by Bush 43 and must be defended from the war that the current administration has declared upon them.

We must also reward work. Government perpetuation of cradle-to-grave dependence is indefensible five decades into the Great Society's failure.

Crime must be punished, white collar and street violence alike. Bankruptcy should be more difficult to declare, and foreclosure shouldn't be as easy as leaving the keys under the door mat and driving away.

My prescription is admittedly tough love, but what works in Belmont merits replication in Fishtown. By embracing the key tenets of American exceptionalism we can reweave the great national quilt.

Repeal and replace Obamacare, but keep the mandate

I have long joined the conservative chorus that Obamacare should be repealed and replaced prior to its full-scale implementation in 2014. However, its triggering mechanism, the individual mandate, is sound policy and should be embedded in the six-point Republican alternative I detail below.

This post is inspired by my reading and subsequent review of the most comprehensive, objective biography biography of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his most substantive policy achievement as Massachusetts governor. It also previews the Supreme Court's consideration of the constitutionality of the individual mandate during three days of oral arguments scheduled for next month.

While I have some expertise as a student of the Constitution and our courts, I'll defer to their eventual ruling on whether the individual mandate exceeds the boundaries of the Interstate Commerce Clause. It does seem to me that there is plenty of water under the bridge given the Court's eventual embrace of the New Deal during the late 1930's, but a fragile conservative majority may seek to rein in the commerce clause and thus undermine Obamacare in the middle of an election year.

My heretical embrace of the individual mandate warrants further explanation. Its presence in the Heritage Foundation's alternative to Hillarycare in the 1990's is a well-worn talking point, and Newt Gingrich is one of many prominent conservatives who endorsed the idea. I would suggest this is consistent with right wing ideology, for it places responsibility on the individual.

Americans receive health care in the country through a variety of channels. Government provides it for the elderly and poor via Medicare and Medicaid, respectively. Most of the gainfully employed receive private insurance through their employers, and the self-employed and other individuals either purchase their own plan or do without. The latter pursue catastrophic care when emergencies inevitably arise, and our hospitals pass on these costs to consumers, which are subsequently reflected in higher premiums across the board. The personally responsible majority is thus punished for the negligence of the minority.

Is it unreasonable to require individuals to purchase health insurance when we hold car owners to the same standard? True, health care premiums are far more expensive than auto insurance, but I would suggest the latter is a model for health care reform, and my six-part plan follows.

One, through cross-subsidization, car insurance is relatively cheap unless one has a reckless driving record. It eliminates the free rider problem, at least in theory. The same principle would hold true with health care. Premiums may even fall.

Two, car insurance is cheaper because it covers only exceptional circumstances like accidents and theft. Routine maintenance and fuel are not included. Real health care reform would ask consumers to foot the costs of preventative care out of pocket, drawing from tax exempt medical savings accounts. We would only tap health insurance in the case of emergencies like cardiac arrest or cancer.

Three, most employers do not offer car insurance to employees nor does our tax code subsidize its extension. We desperately need to make health insurance portable in an economy where we are increasingly free agents. Remove the tax deduction for employers who offer health care as part of their standard package of employee benefits, and provide a reciprocal, revenue-neutral deduction on individual tax returns.

Four, allow individuals to shop for insurance across state lines. The industry enjoys regulated monopolies at the state level (with favorable kickbacks for elected officials) that mandates excessive coverage, with exponential cost implications. Deregulation will lower costs

Five, rescue the health care industry from the grip of trial lawyers. Medical malpractice suits and the excessive punitive damages they encompass is passed along once more to consumers in the form of higher premiums, and our care itself suffers as health care providers logically practice preventive medicine.

Six, remove the shackles of Medicaid and allow states to experiment with more cost-effective means of providing for the health care needs of the indigent. Mitt Romney enjoyed this flexibility in Massachusetts and delivered favorable results, and the same is true of Mitch Daniels' work in Indiana.

In sum, Republicans are right to call for the abolition of Obamacare, but their hatred of the individual mandate is misdirected. A conservative alternative, representing some or all of the key tenets articulated above, would embrace the mandate as a personally-responsible means of insuring that we all pay our fair share of our health care needs. Given his health care reform record in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney is superbly qualified to make this case in November and beyond.

The Real Romney

During my two week hiatus recovering from a nasty winter cold, I read The Real Romney, by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman. While I've read and written about Romney profusely in the past couple of months, I must admit that the South Carolina stomping delivered by former Speaker Newt Gingrich forced me to reconsider the inevitability, and yes even the wisdom, of his pending nomination. As I've said previously, I was a staunch supporter of John McCain in 2008, a man I saw then as Romney's foil. I flirted with Tim Pawlenty early in this cycle, then embraced Jon Huntsman, only to migrate towards the former Massachusetts governor when their campaigns fizzled.

Mitt Romney remains a flawed frontrunner leading a weak field. This qualification aside, The Real Romney raises no further red flags. In fact, it paints a more complete picture of a man whose public persona is excessively robotic. He is the embodiment of a family man, deeply devoted to his wife Ann and their five sons. He is a man of true faith, who walked the walk by helping friends and neighbors in need, and still tithes ten percent of his income to the church.

Romney's intelligence and work ethic are second to none. His performance at Bain Capital speaks to his business acumen. His stewardship of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City saved the whole enterprise from catastrophe and provided an uplifting experience and spectacle for Americans truly in need of a pick-me-up in the months after 9-11.

The citicism of his career in venture capitalism that Romney has endured by his rivals, namely Gingrich and the since departed Rick Perry, is deplorable and was debunked in an earlier post. It remains the gift that keeps on giving to the incumbent president who should be planning a move back to Chicago come January. On the other hand, Romney's political career is also ripe for the picking, and I would suggest, fair game for Republicans and Democrats alike.

Romney will never live down the statements and policy positions from his longshot bid to steal the Kennedy crown in 1994. His pro-choice position, embrace of gay rights, and repudiation of the Reagan-Bush era are enough to make any conservative blush and swallow hard. His successful 2002 gubernatorial bid was similarly pragmatic in a deep blue state with a tendency to check a Democratic legislature with a Rockefeller Republican on Beacon Hill. He remained pro-choice, embraced climate change and measures to address it, and sought and delivered near universal health care coverage to Massachusetts residents via an individual mandate.

True, Romney did undergo a transformation on abortion, and I take this change of heart at face value. Holding Reagan and Bush 41 to the same standard, it's where you end up that matters in my mind.

Although he never advocated for gay marriage, he walked back his support of gay rights when the state supreme court legalized the former by fiat. Given that President Obama doesn't yet support gay marriage either, my hope is for a draw with Romney, as he has committed to upholding gay rights. The push for equality across sexual preferences is in my mind inevitable and justified, and I don't expect either Obama or Romney to stand in the way. This will without doubt add to conservative reservations about the Republican frontrunner, but my breed of elephants consider it an asset.

Romneycare continues to hang as an albatross on his prickly path to Tampa, but it's a trump card in the general election, and I'll dig into this further in a future post (Sneak preview: the individual mandate is conservative, and it is conveniently opposed as a means of undermining Obamacare, legislation that should be repealed for a myriad of reasons beyond the mandate). His clumsy statements on the Second Amendment have also inspired target practice on his pro-gun control record, but the individual right to keep and bear arms will be safe under Romney as it has been under Obama (indeed, 2008 and 2010 were banner years).

This brings us back to Bain Capital, where Romney proved his knowledge of the real economy, and the fall campaign will turn on this issue. I invite a debate over who is better prepared to restore prosperity on Wall Street and Main Street alike.

Let's go mano a mano over the tax code. I'm in favor of policies that encourage investment. What say you? Who will have the courage to embrace entitlement reform and save the social safety net for our posterity? Last week's State of the Union speech was noticeably barren on this count.

How about balancing the budget via spending cuts and a flatter, fairer tax code? Simpson-Bowles was sent promptly to the circular file, but a President Romney just might retrieve it.

So who is the real Romney? He's America's best bet to tackle today's tough issues, and yes, restore our country's greatness.

Gingrich morally unfit for the bully pulpit

If late-breaking polls of likely voters in South Carolina today are accurate, Newt Gingrich is on his way to a decisive comeback victory and Mitt Romney's road to the nomination will soon get a whole lot rockier. The frontrunner has weathered his worst week of the campaign, and will soon head to Florida desperate for safe harbors and smooth sailing in the relatively light month that precedes Super Tuesday in early March, when eleven states will hold primaries or caucuses.

From my vantage point in snowy Chicago, Romney remains the inevitable nominee, and Gingrich's appeal elusive. To me, his lobbying efforts on behalf of Freddie Mac are disqualifying in a polarized political environment of tea party rallies and an occupied Wall Street; the common denominator being anger towards a governing class who deemed their private sector counterparts "too big to fail."

As I've said previously, I am a fan of Gingrich's intellectual heft. I remain appreciative of his leadership of a "revolution" via the Contract with America that placed Congress in Republican hands for the first time in four decades. He reached across the aisle as Speaker to balance the budget and reform welfare. His hypocrisy (a point I'll address below on the marital front) in taking on former House Speaker Jim Wright for his corrupt financial dealings, and President Bill Clinton for his personal dalliances with an intern, resulted in mutiny within his ranks and a premature end to his congressional career. My shelves are stocked with the litany of books he wrote in the interim years, and he remains in my mind, one of the great sources of conservative policy solutions.

It is Gingrich's presidential candidacy that I contest. For a party that impeached Clinton for his extramarital excursions and claimed that his poor personal character tarnished the Oval Office, the hypocrisy of its members who have embraced the former Speaker as the candidate who will take on a man of high character (but flawed beliefs and limited experience) rests at high noon. The presidency requires high moral character of its occupants as its power rests on invoking the bully pulpit and persuading the masses of the integrity of the solutions he embraces.

Gingrich married his high school geometry teacher (their affair began when he was sixteen), and later delivered divorce papers to her hospital bed as she was treated for cancer. His affair with who would become his second wife had already begun, and he later turned the tables on her too after her diagnosis with MS, asking for an "open relationship" in order to carry on an affair with a Capitol Hill staffer who now poses as his Stepford-like wife. While his recent conversion to Catholicism may yield ultimate salvation, his political fate should be sealed, his obituary surfacing long ago.

His decision on Thursday to turn these latest allegations against CNN debate moderator John King was nothing short of pathetic. Killing a mainstream media messenger may be popular sport among conservatives, and this goes a long way in explaining Gingrich's sustenance in this campaign cycle, but voters across the spectrum deserve an answer he simply cannot provide. He lacks the integrity, humility, and moral compass required of the leader of the free world.

The Republican field is down to four finalists, and three of them possess sufficient character for the duties they desire. Gingrich is the odd man out, and it may be up to GOP voters outside of the Palmetto State, Illinois included, to make a market correction and send the former Speaker back where he belongs as a scribe on the sidelines.

Predicting presidential greatness

David Brooks suggested last Friday that Mitt Romney's CEO credentials translate poorly into the prerequisites for presidential leadership. While I dispute this contention on its face, I do find his four alternative predictors convincing, and will attempt to apply them to the likely November matchup between Romney and the incumbent President, Barack Obama.

1. Emotional security: Romney meets this test more squarely given his aristocratic upbringing and the sense of obligation he inherited from his father who served as Governor of Michigan, and was a serious candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, not to mention the dictates of his Mormon faith. Obama also rates highly here, too, although he pursued a more unconventional path short of his attendance of Hawaii's most prestigious prep school, Columbia, and Harvard Law. He clearly developed a sense of social obligation as evidenced by his work as a community organizer and shunning of lucrative law practice for an adjunct teaching position and a political apprenticeship in Springfield.

2. Superb political judgement: Obama's failed presidency is an invokes an immediate "thumbs down" on this predictor. His misread of the real divides between "red" and "blue" America, utter disdain for Congress, small, insular network of advisors, and limited national political experience have been a recipe for disaster. Romney's grade is incomplete, as we have only his four-year tenure as Massachusetts Governor to assess. His failed runs for national office, the U.S. Senate in 1994, and the presidency four years ago, are potential red flags. Working in his favor is a strong record of reaching across the aisle in deep blue Massachusetts with a legislature stacked in opposition to his policy platform.

3. Crushing personal setbacks: While Romney's life reads like a fairy tale, Obama overcame the perpetual absence and untimely death of his father, not to mention a mother whose love was unconditional, but personal presence in his life was sporadic at best. His grandparents filled the vacuum, but the experiences explain why he is often a loner and unrealistic sense of his own personal power to affect change.

4. Instrumental mentality: One need look no further than the line "we are the change we've been waiting for" to mark the President with a failing grade in this area. His dismissal of former Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel's counsel to repeatedly "put points on the board" with the ultimate objective of prevailing over the course of four or eight years is even more damning. For instance, national health care legislation superseded economic recovery, cost him control of Congress, and may lead to his own unemployment this fall. Romney's business career at Bain Capital, leadership of the 2002 Winter Olympics, and one term as Massachusetts Governor hold in common a singular belief in objectives greater than the man himself. He was merely a temporary steward helping to yield the ultimate objective, be it profit, a flawlessly executed Winter Games on the heels of 9/11, or the stewardship of a state deep in the red and recovering from a tech bubble that burst. Romney's moderation, while reviled by some of his conservative opponents and primary voters alike, is an asset in the general election and his potential ascension as the 45th President.

By these measures, Romney barely eclipses Obama. They serve as apt predictors of what promises to be a fiercely fought contest in November. Brooks is right that Romney is currently being tested on many of these parameters as his remaining opponents make their final stands in South Carolina. Obama benefited similarly from the war of attrition waged by Hillary Clinton four years ago. Indeed, he trumped his campaign itself as evidence of his qualifications for the presidency.

Voters have two threshold assessments to make this fall: One, is Obama's first term worthy of a second? Two, assuming a negative answer to the first question, is Romney a plausible alternative? Brooks' predictors of presidential greatness reveal "no" and "yes," answers, respectively.

One and done

Jodi Kantor's (The Obama's, 2011, Little, Brown and Company) inside look at the Obama White House and his marriage and family reinforces Republican concerns about his leadership capacity, but paints the First Family in a mostly positive light, humanizing a president who is too often aloof and professorial. It represents a tale of a power couple desperately tending to their family during a meteoric rise to the presidency and settling in to a White House where they made history by simply walking through the door. As a backdrop, its details the policy landscape the President navigated during the past three years, and it is this stewardship that seems most relevant for an election year where his record will be placed before the electorate.

Obama's early days as President can perhaps mostly aptly be described by the liquid courage that carried over from a euphoric campaign. The President and Michelle truly believed that he was above politics and need not be bothered by the nuances of the process or even extending an olive branch to his partner in political marriage at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. From the very beginning, he retreated to the advice and counsel of an insular group which was fractured by its own internal divisions. For instance, Rahm Emmanuel, ever the practical politician, preferred to continually "put points on the board," setting the stage for victory when the final whistle blew. The Obamas, on the other hand, opted for a Hail Mary on the first play from scrimmage.

Dysfunction was the end result, as the Administration lacked a coherent economic vision at a time of severe upheaval. Valerie Jarrett, a close friend with deep knowledge of the Chicago political scene, attempted to weave the often contradictory interests of the East and West Wings, but her loyalty to the Obama's and steep national learning curve proved a recipe for failure. Interesting enough, although much of the first and even second generation of the White House leadership team has since bid adieu, Jarrett remains in her pivotal position, continued evidence of a First Couple isolated from the country they lead.

Perhaps the most interesting foil centers on Barack and Michelle. Barack was the overachieving politico who rose from a backbencher in Springfield to the Oval Office in four years time. Michelle was the reluctant mother of two children, protective of her family, their marriage, and her husband in that order. She detested politics, seeking all-of-the-above solutions to persistent problems like childhood obesity. Barack, on the other hand, saw opportunities for transformational leadership through the embodiment of his own persona. His relentless push for health care reform, political capital costs aside, is arguably affirmation of this hubris.

Michelle struggled with even moving to Washington at the outset, but later embraced the bully pulpit provided by her position. Barack struggled to recreate the magic of his campaign, realizing that the experience on the trail failed to close the leadership deficit he possessed as a candidate. While the fate of Obamacare, his greatest policy achievement, remains unknown, Michelle's two pet causes (veterans and their families is the second) have gained traction and may in the end demonstrate greater impact.

The epitaph of this barrier-breaking administration will soon be written, and the First Couple should be commended for their remarkable relationship, attuned parenting, and the morally-sound ways they go about their lives. However, Kantor's inside view of a rudderless White House at a time of traumatic economic displacement, not to mention global security threats, is further evidence that a single term is more than sufficient.

Since Inauguration Day three years ago we experienced hope, at least at the outset, followed by disillusionment. Change has certainly surfaced, too, but mostly in the wrong direction. The verdict is in, and it the time has come to clean house and prepare for the next occupants.

Plenty of Bain to go around

While this blog represents an effort to chart a new course for the Republican Party, it certainly embraces the free market philosophy that unites conservatives of all stripes. It is therefore particularly disturbing to see a field of Republican presidential contenders blast the frontrunner, Mitt Romney, for his role as a facilitator of creative destruction at Bain Capital. Sacrificed in their quest for higher office are core conservative principles, Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment ("Thou shall not criticize other Republicans"), and potentially their party's control of the White House, not to mention the future of this great country.

True, Romney's career as a venture capitalist is both an asset and a vulnerability. His knowledge of how the "real economy" works is a powerful strength against an opponent with no appreciation of free market principles or willingness to surround himself with advisers and cabinet officials who do. However, at a time of persistent unemployment, some of it a product of natural capitalistic phenomena like downsizing and outsourcing, Romney risks being portrayed as the very embodiment of the vilified "one percent" targeted by Occupy Wall Street. His statement this summer in defense of corporations and yesterday in favor of health care choice, while accurate and admirable, speak to the risk/ reward nature of his experiences and political positioning in this presidential cycle.

It goes without saying that Romney anticipated these attacks from President Obama,
but their presence in the early contests of the Republican nominating cycle are
deplorable, and Newt Gingrich et al should be shunned and quickly cast aside by
primary voters as road kill on the path to recapturing the White House. Gingrich is
proving George Will's contention that he would have been a good Marxist correct, and
Rick Perry is sacrificing his credibility as a job creator is the capitalist utopia of Texas as they embrace populist rhetoric to score cheap political points. Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman deserve their own shares of blame for their rhetoric on this front the past couple of days, though it is tame by comparison. Ron Paul deserves kudos for remaining true to his deep commitment to free markets.

Romney's earlier than anticipated test on his past tendency to issue pink slips speaks to his need to massage his messaging immediately. His net job creation retort needs to grow into a broader narrative about the beauty of creative destruction, a hallmark of advanced economies, and in the case of the contemporary United States, economic recovery. Moreover, Washington itself is ripe for a downsize, with the net result of lower taxes and less burdensome regulation yielding high-end private sector job creation.

Romney's almost singular focus on Obama's failed presidency since he launched his
campaign is on target. He would be wise to fine-tune his rhetoric and framing of his
private sector career in the "real economy." Reagan faced a similar predicament in 1980 when he challenged a personally popular Democratic incumbent with an anemic economic record. Substituting Obama for Carter in his famous quote, Romney can borrow the Gipper's opening salvo for the general election: "When your neighbor loses his job, it's a recession. When you lose yours, it's a depression. The recovery begins when Barack Obama loses his."

In search of the perfect candidate

The search for the perfect opponent to make President Obama a one-termer is futile. Republicans are notably lukewarm at best about their choices this winter and spring as the party attempts once more to capture lightning in a bottle and find the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan.

The truth is, primary voters in 1980 had problems of their own with Reagan. Iowa caucus-goers awarded him a silver to his eventual running mate, George H.W. Bush, and conservatives were weary about several of his actions as California, including signing on to tax increases, liberalizing the state's abortion laws, and speaking out in favor of gay rights. He trounced his opposition in New Hampshire by 27 points, and the rest is of course history.

While we don't anticipate Mitt Romney to win by quite as wide of a margin in the Granite State, it should be comfortable nonetheless, allowing political junkies everywhere to get a good night's sleep in comparison to last Tuesday's late evening and early morning. I expect him to use this momentum to build on his lead in South Carolina, and essentially clear the field after prevailing in Florida at the end of the month.

Romney's coronation inevitable, and conservative's caveats about him well-documented, I'd like to use last weekend's debates and my independent examinations of each of the individual candidates to build a party platform and policy prescriptions for the former Massachusetts governor's first 100 days as president. Flawed as the prohibitive frontrunner and his rivals may be, I would retain elements of each of their respective issue positions as we pivot toward the general election battle.

Romney: Economic technocrat with 52 point plan to get America working again.

Santorum: Populist who work strengthen the social capital of our communities (see Saturday's post) and would use the tax code to incentivize manufacturing, with its significant value-added and potential to rebuild the middle class, over retail and other sectors of the service economy.

Gingrich: The professor is never short on innovative, mostly conservative, policy ideas, and his humane approach towards undocumented immigrants who are in this country, working hard, and raising families needs a home in the Party of Lincoln.

Huntsman: The ambassador's call for a more humble foreign policy, which includes reduced defense spending, is a nod to fiscal realities and the "new red menace" staring us in the face. Huntsman is also right to court gay voters by embracing civil unions.

Paul: Eccentric Ob-Gyn goes to far when he claims that "we're all Austrians" and calls for the abolition of the Fed, but a tighter monetary policy is an essential prescription as inflation rears its ugly head once more. Paul also has the most serious plan to cut spending and balance the budget in a city that celebrates cuts to projected increases.

Perry: George W. Bush on steroids has waged one of the most disappointing campaigns in recent history, but his call for the devolution of social programs to the state via bloc grants bears consideration, as does the business-friendly environment he helped create in Texas which has fueled a large percentage of job creation since the Great Recession. Perry also deserves credit for extending in-state tuition rates for undocumented students who graduate from high school.

There's something to be learned from the sweater vest

Rick Santorum's surprise second place finish (virtual tie for first) in the Iowa Caucuses took the political world by storm, and a surge of campaign donations and an uptick in the polls have invited inevitable scrutiny of his record. His heavy appetite for pork, comfort with K Street, and extreme positions on abortion, contraceptives, and gay rights are disqualifying in my mind and speak to the weakness of a candidate who lost his last bid for reelection by 18 points in a swing state. These qualifications aside, as I said in my post on Wednesday, Mitt Romney would be smart to analyze and partially co-opt Santorum's themes centering on rebuilding societal bonds and fully embracing the Reagan Democrats ripe for picking come fall.

The modern Republican Party represents an uncomfortable marriage between libertarians, social conservatives, and military hawks (neocons). Romney spoke often in his 2008 campaign about uniting the three legs of the Republican stool, but the second group has been elusive thus far in the 2.0 version of his candidacy. The base is skeptical of his commitment to their values on a range of issues, from reducing the size of government to his commitment to appointing originalists to the Supreme Court who will overturn Roe v. Wade and otherwise walk the party line. Since the 2012 campaign kicked off last spring, no less than five contenders for Romney's foil have risen and fallen (Santorum's collapse is pending).

In all honesty, like John McCain in 2008, Romney will not likely earn the trust of true believers before they cast their ballots next November. This bond will be sealed through his running mate selection, a subject of a post soon-to-come. He can, however, begin pivoting towards the general election contest and testing his message for the summer and fall, and he would be wise to revisit Santorum's widely acclaimed victory speech last Tuesday.

As David Brooks so ably captured in his New York Times column yesterday, something is amiss in America, as our citizens have become deeply disenchanted with both public and private institutions and our social fabric is unraveling. President Obama tapped into this four years ago, but unfortunately, the cause of "hope" and "change" begins and ends at the White House door. In short, despite his lofty rhetoric, he was the change he had been waiting for.

If Romney seeks to live up to his campaign slogan and help voters "believe in America" once more, he must transcend economic stewardship and emphasize the fact that lower taxes, reduced spending, and balanced budgets are one important leg of the stool, but culture matters, and ours is badly frayed.

The late great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself." I think this captures the spirit of Rick Santorum's message and appeal to at least a quarter of caucus-goers last Tuesday evening.

The libertarian wing of the party is right that the "new red menace" (to quote Mitch Daniels), our national debt, is spiraling out of control and imperils the economic security of our posterity. They are wrong, however, to downplay the importance of our mutual obligations to one another in a society. Their hatred of all things government is not only impractical, but truly selfish. Good citizenship certainly means working hard, paying one's bills on time, and obeying the law, but it is empty without acknowledgment of our mutual destiny as a society.

The problems our country currently faces, beginning with a debt that has surpassed our annual GDP, but also encompassing underfunded and ill-structured entitlement programs, a crumbling infrastructure, exponential growth in health care costs (the true driver of unequal access and not resolved by Obamacare), and a broken immigration system, will not be resolved if we continue to train our eyes only on Number One. If Mitt Romney and his eventual running mate can help restore this mutuality between us as individuals and our 300 million compatriots, the America he envisions will slowly, but surely, be reawakened.

Hawkeye down

Mitt Romney's 8-vote victory over Rick Santorum last evening, coupled with Ron Paul's solid third place showing, represent the proverbial three tickets out of Iowa. The Hawkeye State lived up to its reputation for winnowing the field as Michelle Bachmann bowed out today after a disappointing sixth place finish, and Rick Perry refused to take a similar cue despite early indications that he got the message that his campaign is DOA--oops.

That leaves Newt Gingrich, who cratered into a fourth place finish after a meteoric rebound a few weeks ago, and Jon Huntsman, who took a pass on Iowa and camped out instead in the Granite State circa John McCain in 2008. Newt arrived in New Hampshire on fumes, bloodied by a series of negative ads financed by Perry, Paul, and Romney-affiliated Super PACs. Last night's angry concession speech by the former House Speaker promised a new strategy, shedding the Mr. Nice Guy disguise for "Nuclear Newt." He ran a full page ad in this morning's Manchester (NH) Union-Leader contrasting himself from Romney, who remains a HUGE favorite in his adopted home state. Mitt is the "moderate Massachusetts Republican" (where have you gone, Nelson Rockefeller?), and Gingrich the "Reagan conservative."

Against this backdrop, I'd like to share my strategy memo for Mitt Romney assessing the current dynamics of the Republican race:
1. Romney's victory in Iowa last evening was not hollow. He devoted limited resources there and still prevailed in a state unfriendly to establishment Republicans. Santorum is in the mold of the candidate Hawkeye social conservatives prefer. His photo finish with the prohibitive national frontrunner is worthy of acclaim, but an anti-Romney challenger on the right was inevitable, and Santorum wore this sweater vest well.

2. Romney will be tested by the battle of expectations in New Hampshire and Gingrich's renewed commitment to knock him off his pedestal. Anything less than a 20-point victory will be pitched as further signs of Romney's vulnerabilities, with the first Southern test on the horizon in South Carolina. Romney is smart to pivot back to the general election contest he has run from the outset, remaining above the fray and focusing on Obama's failed presidency. Trotting out the McCain endorsement today lends credibility to the inevitability of his nomination. Beware of being blindsided during Saturday's debate.

3. A bleeding Romney opens a small window for Huntsman, the only candidate who has yet to surge in the field of current and former contenders. He's polling in the low teens, but paralleled Santorum's commitment to Iowa in New Hampshire, and may surge if rank-and-file Republicans seek an electable alternative to Romney. Odds are that Huntsman is one and done, for like Santorum, he doesn't have the resources or organization to go the distance against Romney's well-oiled delegate gathering machine.

4. Romney would be wise to co-opt Santorum's appeal to Reagan Democrats. His speech last evening was the best of the six delivered as he placed his finger on what perennially plagues Republicans: the party's inability to offer anything to blue collar workers other than tax cuts and reduced government spending. Romneycare is an asset here, as he needs to avoid the natural association with OWS' 1% and expand the tent of the country club wing of the GOP.

5. A play to Paulites will be more difficult, as Romney's hawkish defense positions endanger their drift to Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party in the general election. Huntsman has played this policy angle well in line with George W. Bush's humbler foreign policy pledge of 2000 devoid of nation-building. Isolation is not the answer, but there is something to Paul's argument that military and defense are not one in the same.

Romney's strategy memo detailed, I'll return later this week with additional ruminations on the political version of Mardi Gras playing out across New Hampshire, including an analysis of Saturday's debate.