Another Break -- Newt Gingrich

An interesting hour this afternoon. Every year, the American Enterprise Institute runs a 3 day event that brings together a number of public figures and policy makers. It was created years ago by former president Ford so, as you might expect, it has a definitely conservative bent. In addition to Ford, who's there every year even at 92, past years have seen folks like Rumsfeld, Cheney and others of their ilk.

One afternoon each year, they have a session that is open to the public. Its usually a panel discussion. The first year -- two years ago -- that I went, the panel included Ford and a guy whose name I can't remember who was an insider on Bush's national security staff. This was just as the war in Iraq had kicked off and we were assured by the panel that, any day, the WMDs would be found in Iraq. So much for that.

This year they switched formats to a single speaker and the speaker at hand was former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. While Newt's not exactly my cup of tea politically, I thought it'd be interesting to hear him, especially if, as expected, he runs for President next time around. He's not much to look at -- fairly short and a little portly with silver hair, dressed in khakis and a casual sport shirt -- so I was really pretty surprised when he turns out to be a fairly charming guy with a ton of charisma.

He's just published two new books - the 3rd volume in his "what if" series about the Civil War and one called "Winning the Future" that is a non-fiction political tome. He started his brief talk speaking about the Civil War book and history in general. He won a lot of points with me by talking about one of my pet peeves -- that history, the way its taught to our kids, is boring. These incredible stories about incredible people are generally thrown over in a quest to get kids to memorize dates and events that have no life. The lucky few will discover a fascination with history on their own later in life, but most people grow up continuing to believe that reading history is boring. Too bad.

I came away from the talk believing that was a really smart guy who could be an interesting part of a true national dialog. Right now the country is so polarized that I'm not convinced meaningful dialog is possible. Both the left and the right push every issue to the extreme. Most people are smart enough to know that reality and solutions lie somewhere between the poles. If a guy like Gingrich could push us towards a civil dialog about the real issues of the day, he could be a real win.

I found myself agreeing with him at least on what the primary issues of the next few decades will be -- security first, but closely followed by health care and education. He urged the audience to recognize that the US did not have its position in the world be divine right. The sooner we recognized that the competition to come from the far east -- China and India in particular -- the sooner we can make the hard choices that will prepare us for that era. I'm not sure how much he and I would agree on (probably more than I would have thought), but I really hope we can publicly face these issues and find real solutions, rather than highly principaled inaction!