A presidential candidate can’t think like an analyst or a college professor, Newt Gingrich said a day or two ago, because those folks can say what they think.
This perceptive comment came after Gingrich said what he thought about Rep. Paul Ryan’s prescription for Medicare and brought down a torrent of abuse around his shoulders.
Rep. Ryan of Wisconsin is chairman of the House Budget Committee who has proposed a radical revision of Medicare which would give seniors vouchers with which to buy private health insurance rather than pay their medical costs directly as is now the case.
Republican supporters of Ryan objected in fury to Gingrich’s description of the Ryan plan as “radical.” Ryan commented wryly that with “allies like that, who needs the left?”
Gingrich, who has been a college professor and is an astute analyst of governmental affairs, realized he had been impetuous and apologized profusely. Then he compounded his problem by saying he believes “that everyone should share in the cost of health care,” and therefore that any reform must include a mechanism that requires universal participation. That requirement is in the Obama reform package and is one of the main objections Republicans have to it.
Chances are that his candid and quite accurate analysis of the Ryan plan doomed whatever chances he had at the Republican nomination.
One can hope, however, that Gingrich will continue to say what he thinks as the Republican Party continues its search for a presidential candidate. The former speaker of the House of Representatives is as well informed about American government as anyone on the political scene. His observations will always be interesting even if his solutions to America’s problems will seem both radical and impractical to most of us.
Give him a microphone whenever he feels the urge to sound off.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
