Why to support Mitt Romney
Few things seem to frustrate some blog readers more than a blogger who generally agrees with them but supports a different political candidate than they do. Several readers of this blog have expressed incredulity over the past six months that The Economic Nationalist would consider supporting Mitt Romney for the U.S. presidency. It falls to me as the editor of The Economic Nationalist to explain why.
The explanation begins with some perspective. The presidential election of 2008 will be my ninth. My reasons for voting various ways have varied over the years, nor do I any longer fully agree with some of my own votes past; but, for the record, I have voted thus: 1976 Ford; 1980 Reagan; 1984 Reagan; 1988 (unbelievably but nevertheless) Paul; 1992 (hopefully) Perot; 1996 (unhappily) Dole; 2000 (enthusiastically) Buchanan; 2004 (reluctantly) Bush. Surely I would have voted Nixon in 1972 had I then been of age. Today’s older Howard Harrison (this writer) would have voted George Wallace in 1968, but the younger Howard would have voted Robert Kennedy had Kennedy lived. In 1964, Goldwater would have been an easy choice, and I suppose that (if I may adopt the wise attitudes of my parents) I would have voted Republican in 1960, 1956, 1952 and 1948 as well. That takes us back into rather different times, so let us halt the historical march there and return to the present.
So many elections under so many various circumstances have taught me at least two things. First, the inability of one’s preferred political faction to win over the rank-and-file members of either of America’s two great, national parties is reason to be patient and to try harder; it is seldom sufficient excuse to form a third party (the U.S. differs from Britain and Canada in this respect, indirectly because our Constitution and consequent method of choosing national executive leadership differs). Second, we have had two very fine presidents in Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan plus several presidents who were less fine during the post-War era, none of whom were faultless, all of whom you and I could have disagreed with on important issues and all of whom made important mistakes for which the nation in one way or another still suffers. Surely the country would have been better off without Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, but can you really say the same about Presidents Eisenhower and Reagan? I cannot. I fear that the rest of this article will mean little to anyone who can say such a thing.
Among Republicans today, only Ron Paul’s supporters would forecast with confident certainty what kind of president their man would make. Anyone who thinks that he knows just how Fred Thompson or John McCain would actually lead the nation knows more than I do. We have however better indicators for other candidates like Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani, because they have actually run something; they have led big, consequential institutions. For no candidate in either national party is this truer than for Mitt Romney.
Mr. Romney reminds us gently but persistently that, if we want to know how he would manage the federal government, then we should look first to how he has managed the government of Massachusetts, then to how he built a small business into a big business and saved the Olympic Games during the preceding decades. What could be fairer than Mr. Romney’s reminder? Naturally, it is impossible to suppose that one could ever agree with all of the many, many important decisions Mr. Romney has made over so many years, but isn’t it nice to know that a presidential candidate has such a rich fund of experience to draw upon and such a long history one can reliably judge him by? A executive neophyte who shows promise might be entrusted with the office of sheriff, but one would be rather reluctant to entrust such a candidate with the presidency of the United States. (The last reason is why The Economic Nationalist has held back from endorsing the otherwise very fine economic nationalist Duncan Hunter. Upon such an admission, the observant reader might ask how this writer could so enthusiastically have supported Pat Buchanan in the past. Answer: Mr. Buchanan had learned right at the elbows of not one but two presidents; he had been around, so to speak. This incidentally is the same reason the political charge of inexperience against Hillary Clinton will not stick. Excepting political opponents understandably blinded by their own opposition, the whole nation realizes just how germane is Mrs. Clinton’s admirably varied experience to the high office she seeks. The problem with Mrs. Clinton is not lack of experience, it is the 1960s-radical, liberal record she has compiled while gaining that experience. I digress, admittedly. I do want to point out one thing, though, before returning to the subject of Mr. Romney, as follows. Even my hero Pat Buchanan could be wrong in my view on important questions, most notably that of Israel. That alone was no more a reason to oppose Mr. Buchanan then than Mr. Romney’s heterodoxy on trade and immigration is a reason to oppose Mr. Romney today. The Founders gave us a Congress in part to correct the errors of a mistaken executive. A President Romney mistaken on a few issues will be all right.)
This brings us to the principal reason I believe that you should seriously consider supporting Mitt Romney enthusiastically for the presidency of the Unites States in 2008: out-of-control federal spending. I am persuaded that if Mr. Romney cannot get control of federal spending, then it cannot be done. Getting control of spending is the record of the man’s whole life. He has excelled at it, at every conceivable level. No one in the United States I know of—no one whatsoever—is as qualified to attack the titanic structural problem of out-of-control federal spending during the coming four years. As much as I like Mike Huckabee, Mr. Huckabee’s record is more nearly described as a record of fiscal errors he has learned from than as one of fiscal discipline he has built upon. Mr. Giuliani’s record in this regard is good but remains less extensive than Mr. Romney’s. The records of Messrs. McCain and Thompson are of a legislative not an executive character. Dr. Paul’s record is an admirable, reliable record of principled opposition—this counts for much—but, be that as it may, Dr. Paul’s record still cannot factually be characterized as a record of successful executive practice.
I say it again: I am persuaded that if Mitt Romney cannot get control of federal spending, then it cannot be done. This matters. No one can prove ahead of time that any candidate actually has the capability to get control of federal spending, because it has never been done in the entire Franklin D. Roosevelt-inaugurated era of Big Government. Whom do you trust to try, if not Mr. Romney? Mr. Romney’s only realistic competitor for the presidency in this particular respect, besides the wholly unacceptably mercurial John McCain, is Ron Paul.
Comes the hue, comes the cry: what about trade and immigration? Well, Mr. Romney stands comfortably between the extremes on both issues. Regarding trade, I think that we economic nationalists should not commit the same sin of pride we find in the free traders. Mr. Romney’s knowledge of money and business, of practical economics, is vast. It does not demean you or me to admit this. Mr. Romney is no ideologue: he confesses for instance the importance of America’s self-sufficiency in energy, anathema to a free-trading true believer. If Fred Thompson lectured us on economics, we would tell him to shush: he hasn’t earned the right. Mitt Romney has earned the right—and the exercise of that right is not contingent on whether or not we agree with him. Regular readers of this blog know very well that I think Mr. Romney significantly in error on trade. The same readers should not be surprised however if I admit that Mr. Romney knows more about the issue than I do (and I do know a fair bit, you must admit). They should not be surprised that I am willing to listen and to learn. We should all be willing to listen to and to learn from Mr. Romney on this issue. Listening to and learning from the wise and experienced has never prevented anyone, least of all you or me, from drawing his own conclusions, after all.
Regarding immigration, Mr. Romney has not earned the right to lecture us on the topic, but he still has the right to an opinion—and inasmuch as he is running for the U.S. presidency, I would say that his opinion matters. The opinion basically is wrong, but it pays to look more closely. Mr. Romney recognizes correctly that highly skilled immigrants bring the nation important benefits other immigrants do not bring, and that unless Muslim (Mr. Romney understands this facet too) they and their children make orderly, law-abiding citizens. Mr. Romney wants to bring fewer unskilled immigrants and more highly skilled immigrants. This would be bad if it were still 1965, but in 2007 the country is already tragically diverse; she is going to have to pay the long price for ethnic diversity, whether we will or nill. If she must pay the price in any case, then should she not also at least reap the benefit? Mr. Romney’s immigration policy might aptly be named, “reaping the benefit.”
Now, as it happens, I tend to disagree with Mr. Romney on immigration policy, even so. But can you not see why my disagreement is muted? Mr. Romney’s policy has a real logic to it, based not in ideology but in real facts on the ground. One positive way forward for the nation might be to have a Romney immigration policy for four or eight years, then to dismiss Mr. Romney from office and take the next step, ending immigration permanently on Mr. Romney’s positive note.
Politics is the art of the possible. I have a pretty broad estimation of what is possible, I think; but I do believe that possibility has practical limits. I also believe that economic nationalism like most worthy goals admits alternate profitable approaches. I judge Mitt Romney to be the right man at the right hour in America’s history. I tell you, I am quite pleased with him. I refuse to be so ungenerous as to oppose his extremely promising effort at long last to get control of federal spending—not when I can see that even his trade and immigration policies have real merits to offset their manifest flaws. Besides, Mr. Romney can’t just have his way on trade, immigration or anything else. Congress has a voice, too.
On morality and the family, why, when Mr. Romney says and reiterates that the most important work in America is the work that goes on between the four walls of the American home, does anyone doubt his earnestness? Does anyone doubt that the family is bedrock to him, or that moral issues are core issues to him? Look at the man’s own family. Words are cheap. Actions and results speak louder. When one contrasts Mr. Giuliani’s weak “Obviously my personal life does not affect my job performance” to Mr. and Mrs. Romney’s manifest family excellence and Mr. Romney’s four-year, last-stand, emergency defense of marriage in over-the-top liberal Massachusetts, well, let us just say that Mr. Romney is the genuine article.
The foregoing gives reason enough to support Mr. Romney, and I have not even spoken of the huge issue of out-of-control health-care costs in America. Ideologically, I feel inclined to concur with Mr. Romney’s Republican rivals that free markets provide the best health care, but ideology does not blind me to observable facts. The French, the Scandinavians, the British, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Canadians live no shorter lives than we do, but their medical care costs about half as much. This is an observable fact. Does this mean that we should adopt their systems? No, not necessarily; but it does mean that something has gone badly wrong with our system. Mitt Romney is America’s premiere leader right now on the health-care issue, bar none, head and shoulders above any rival. He knows more about it than anybody. His solution in Massachusetts is spectacularly novel, yet based in practical conservative principles, and thus far it seems to work. Mrs. Clinton’s overreaching, socialistic national health-care proposal is naturally not the right answer, but if Republicans keep opposing, opposing, opposing, then they are going to drive me and millions of other Republicans into the Democratic camp on this issue. In the long run, I would prefer “Hillarycare” to the status quo. What I really want though is a forthright Republican recognition that health care is a huge and growing national problem, followed by a Republican solution big enough to clean up the health-care mess.
Young readers who have never had emergency surgery on private insurance might not understand how dire the problem really is. They should not make the mistake of minimizing the problem. If any among them cannot yet empathetically respect the position of someone who falls sick through no particular fault of his own, then they should at least understand politically that nonspecific blather about free-market solutions will absolutely, positively not win over the millions of conservative-minded Americans whose own repeated experience has taught them to fear their health insurers. Cocksurety that the fear were irrational, besides that such cocksurety is misguided, is a major political loser. What worked politically in 1993, when Hillarycare 1.0 narrowly failed, will not work again in 2008.
On health care, Mr. Romney gets it.
Now, you do not have to agree with me regarding health care, and I shall think no less of you for it, but consider: if a far right-wing, deeply traditionally conservative Republican in his fifties like Howard Harrison is saying such things as he has said in this article, then what do you think middle America at large is saying? Do you really think that Republicans are going to get away with stalling and obstructing on the issue? What we need, frankly, is exactly what Mr. Romney proposes, “a Republican solution” to the problem. This is where Mr. Romney comes in.
The one issue on which I suspect Mr. Romney regards the right to bear arms. I do not think that the man is a threat to seize our guns but at the same time I do not think that he really comprehends the issue. This is ironic, since Mr. Romney is a Mormon and Mormons are famously zealous for gun rights (the only major state university I know that actively supports conceal-carry is the University of Utah)—which only underscores Mr. Romney’s lack of pretense to speak for all Mormons. Anyway, no, I don’t fully trust Mr. Romney to veto bad gun legislation; and, no, though I think that he does fully understand the trade issue I do not think that he fully understands the Second Amendment; in fact, I see little sign that he has ever thought about it much. At least, Mr. Romney has not convinced me yet. I wish that Mr. Romney would spend an hour meditating on Patrick Henry, then would take the trouble to acquaint himself with the deep historical background underlying the Second Amendment. This in my mind is probably the most valid reason to oppose him. Fortunately governors have more to do with gun rights than presidents do, and Mr. Romney is not running for governor this time.
Mitt Romney is no more a perfect presidential candidate than Ronald Reagan and Dwight D. Eisenhower were, but he seems one of the finer presidential candidates the Republican party has found in its entire history. He is a winner. He can beat Hillary Clinton (don’t believe the early head-to-head general-election polls; history assures us that people who credit such polls so early soon learn how little they understand American politics). He gives us the best shot we have left at reining in federal spending before retiring Baby Boomers drawing Social Security devastate the federal budget. The great economic nationalist candidate, the true heir to Pat Buchanan, has not yet arrived on the scene; but Mitt Romney is available right now. He just may be too good to pass up.
There is another matter which is important to me and, I suggest, should be important to you, too, regardless of which candidate you happen to support. It is a foundational tenet of conservative traditionalism that ideology is bad whereas principle is good. To fail to recognize the difference, or to believe the difference a matter of degree rather than of species, is a forgivable but typical fault of masculine youth (young women usually seeming to avoid this particular error). To listen closely to Mitt Romney’s several speeches affords a valuable education in the matter, because—whatever Mr. Romney’s other merits or faults—he poses one of the clearer examples of nonideological, soundly principled conservatism to have appeared on the national stage since Ronald Reagan’s time. You will seldom find a less ideological conservative. To realize principles the man believes in observation and praxis, never in preconceived, detached intellectual constructs of any kind.
One final note. If you are a conservative American traditionalist over a certain age, then the venerable name of Paul Weyrich will mean something to you. Did you know that Paul Weyrich said this? Let us not you and I be too proud to listen. Mr. Weyrich’s words do not fall idly.
Howard J. Harrison
The Economic Nationalist
November 19th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
You will settle once again for the lesser of evils. Your preferred evil is Mitt Romney. Where has settling for the lesser of evils gotten this country in the past 20 years?