In Which Hugh Hewitt Meets a Live Blog for His Fourth Way

In Which Hugh Hewitt Meets a Live Blog for His Fourth Way February 22, 2017

hughIf there is a new Bill Buckley, his name is Hugh Hewitt. He is a calm and thoughtful voice and if he is partisan, then it is with good cheer. He bets his hopes and not his fears.

I was (and remain) NeverTrump, part of the loyal opposition of Republican in exile from power. Hewitt chose a different path. While he was critical of our President during the primaries and election, Hewitt stayed the course based on several arguments. They were good arguments, even if I ended up unpersuaded.

Judge Gorsuch is my dream nominee (I will live blog his book on euthanasia soon), but I still think the moral opprobrium gathering around our cause makes the price too high. Hewitt, I am sure, would attack my delicacy charmingly.

This is a man unfairly attacked by the President during the debates who never justified the man’s evils, but still was willing to put what he takes to be the common good over his own inclinations.

There is much to be said for this. Now this joyful, rhetorically nimble professor has written a book.

The Fourth Way must be read . . . and I say that even before reading it. Buy it. Why? Not because Hugh is my friend, though he is, but because I know it will make the best case for optimism in the Age of Trump. Will I share his optimism at the end of the book?

I doubt it, but like any Socratic teacher I must keep an open mind. 

And now for the book. Here are the rules: I read a book quickly, commenting as I go. The post is only lightly edited if at all.  These are my honest comments. I have already said I greatly admire Hugh Hewitt, but I he also knows I pull no punches. Ever. At the same time, I have been wrong before now (I did not think Trump could win) and have dearest friends who think our President can be great.

Time to listen. I start reading at 7:18 PM on 21 February, 2017.

Preface: With All Deliberate Speed 

Hewitt points out that whatever is about to happen: it will be new.

This is a key observation as his statement that Bush “compassionate conservatism” is dead. Hewitt is a party regular (though a conservative), so this is an important admission.

Trump is not going to go back to the past. I cannot say that makes me happy . . . since the Burke in me thinks the past, even the recent past, has much to teach us. Hewitt started his book with key historical documents, but this break with the GOP of my childhood and youth (Reagan! Pope John Paul II!) is . . . nearly . . . traumatic to me.

Hewitt, who worked for Reagan as a lad, somehow sounds positively jolly about the changes.

I am either too conservative or Hewitt is not conservative enough. Surely he is not going to be a vicar of Bray?

Hewitt is much kinder to Bannon than I am. I say every day in my prayers: “Delenda est Bannonism.”  I think Bannonism a will to power for good ends, but by any means. Perhaps Bannon is not a Bannonista and I have misunderstood him. I hope so.

Hewitt does not address these concerns, merely points out (rightly) the obnoxious hatred of normal folk by the self-appointed elite. As a man who could have been a member of that elite, Hewitt is well positioned for a jeremiad against these self-appointed brightest and best who have led us dimly and badly.

He says:

The “Third Way” is deeply hostile to religion, especially traditional Christianity and its parent Judaism, and is often infused with at least a sneer of real, ugly anti-Semitism.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 102-103). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Yet Hugh: Bannon himself is willing to work with European groups that are filled with anti-Semites and racists. He hopes time will wash them away, but experience in the Russian Civil War and in Germany in the interwar period is not promising.

I cannot go there. I cannot do that.

Hugh is right about some things, however. Our religious views (Hewitt is a Presbyterian and I am Orthodox, but we are both Mere Christians of the CS Lewis sort) are “out” as far the Establishment goes. We have no hope to even a hearing from the elite in the academy.

Hugh defines his terms:

Now comes the opportunity for a “Fourth Way,” a recasting of long-stalemated left-right politics, absorbing most of the traditional Reagan agenda (and methods)— free markets and strong defense— while adding an emphasis on improvements in infrastructure and modernized delivery of those parts of government that cannot be replaced by the private sector.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 114-116). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

This is traditional Republicanism. It dominated from Lincoln to (at least) McKinley and Hewitt is right to point this out. I can sympathize with all of it. If Trump understands this, then all is well.

Or will Trump be dominated by a darker idea: Bannonism- a blood and soil apocalyptic vision of a civilization at war with . . . someone. . . always. . . and doomed if we do not fight “by any means?”

Hewitt and Bannon are hard to imagine in the same room. Hewitt would not have given MILO a platform.

Hewitt talks about his colleagues on the air, but there I depart from him. I have met many of them and found too many to be lightly armed intellectually and (in some cases) ill tempered frauds eager to sell books.

They were free trade when this was in fashion and changed quickly. They are thermostats of political temperature, not thermometers and we should not trust them.

Yet . . . there are those who have not bowed the knee to Baal and Hugh is one such man. He will call the President out . . . and he will fight the good fight, even if he is slower to do it that some of us (ahem!) might wish.

So there is that . . . he has earned our trust, even if he is overly generous.

As a son of West Virginia, who is proud to be a Mountaineer and even a hillbilly, I know Hewitt understands the crisis we face. The values that made us great are being destroyed by the cultural left and nothing is left in their place but hillbilly heroin.

I am listening Hugh.

He suggests that Trump govern in the “key of we” and part of me (after one month of this administration) wishes to snort. There is no “we” in Trump, unless it is the regal “we.”

Yet . . . maybe. When he was slapped back on Flynn, we got a splendid choice. Perhaps Trump cannot say he is wrong, but learns from mistakes.

must give my President a chance.  Much of his cabinet is impressive, though Hugh should concede that cabinet secretaries do less than White House insiders (Bannon).

Hugh says:

Get it wrong and the midterm elections will be catastrophic. And who knows what 2020 will bring. President Trump is certain to face a primary challenger if he abandons the GOP platform in a sustained fashion. Even a single Supreme Court nominee from outside the school of constitutional originalism would trigger a challenge, and any significant scandals will ignite an impeachment effort, which is why President Trump must insist on a “Caesar’s Wife” approach to his team from day one.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 238-241). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

I will (probably) never vote for Donald John Trump. I think him morally unfit for office and no amount of success (if success there is) makes a misogynist fit for governance.  Yet I hope he is utterly successful, because I love my nation. 

I hope his repentance is real, his heeds Hewitt’s advice, and my fears fade away (like my pundit career!) into history. Hewitt has hope, but I have none, because I believe character tells me what the man to do and the man is unfit for leadership.

Time for dinner.

II Introduction: Governing in the “Key of We”: Jaguars in the Water, Clinics on the Ground, an Immigration Overhaul in the Air

7:54 PM

Hewitt calls for the President, the Republicans in Congress, and Republicans on the Court to unite in common desire to good. He predicts doom if this is not done.

Isn’t the greatest obstacle to the is the President of the United States and his ability to produce so much noise the signal is obscured?

Fire Bannon. Hire more like Jim Baker to get the job done. We need old hands to help the new man get what he wants. Fire those who would obstruct, but do not bring in “yes men” or weird ideologues who roil the nation.

The left needs no excuse to lie about Republicans. Romany was a racist and a plutocrat. The President should give up the insane, indefensible Tweets. They are not way they won. They why he almost lost to the worst candidate ever.

Hewitt presses for the right sort of infrastructure spending. I cannot stress how important I think this is. All my life I have benefited by the libraries, roads, and airports built by Ike Republicans and FDR Democrats. This is something both parties go right and I have yet to meet a “non-political” who is not for both.

It is Obama’s “shovel ready jobs” that never happened.

This is brilliant and it the Henry Clay roots of the party through Ike and leading to Reagan (navy!).

Go Hewitt. When he says this:

Can you imagine Donald Trump spending $ 831 billion and not leaving a mark? Whatever the size of his infrastructure program, you are going to see it, and see if for a hundred years.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 395-396). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

I can almost, almost imagine voting to re-elect such a President Trump.

Build that school. Build that community swimming pool. Build that road. Build the library.

Hugh is totally right about this and if this is done the GOP will govern for the rest of my life. 

Hewitt talks movingly about his service on the Children and Families Commission of Orange County. He has walked the talk. I know this for a fact . . . and this was useful government work that both liberals (Rob Reiner!) and conservatives could support.

I am for this.  To my present and former students too quick to write off the GOP, read this:

No public service has given me more satisfaction than this board, not even the honor of serving in President Reagan’s White House Counsel’s Office under Fred Fielding and Dick Hauser and alongside the future chief justice. And that is because of what the commission has been able to do for children in need in my home county through partnerships with the best and the brightest there. Along the way I’ve come to understand the enormous challenges faced by the immigrant community— those in the country legally and those not— the homeless community, the foster care community, and the community of families with children with autism and other diagnoses and disorders.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 446-450). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

This is my GOP. This is my GOP adapting to new times.

God help me, but I do not think President Trump is capable of this. May I be wrong!

Read this book and the story of the Orange County swimming team that beat obesity and was good clean fun. It brought tears to my eyes. Conservatives are not opposed to government, but failed government. When Hewitt begins his pitch for helping kids with autism, then I know he understand the Lincoln-Ike-Reagan (really Henry Clay) Fourth Way . . . but better he has done it.

It can be done. Trump could do it.

Hewitt advances (quite rightly) the notion of subsidiarity:

This is “subsidiarity” at work, a core component of long-standing Roman Catholic social teaching and widely adopted outside of the church by conservatives of other faiths or no faith at all. The idea is that pressing problems ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 625-627). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

My present college students and most of my former students could be united by this. If the GOP adopts this plan, then we will deserve to win, because we will do well by doing good.

This is the speech I wait for the President to give:

Everywhere in this country there are projects that need doing, clinics that need opening and doctors who need a place to volunteer as they do in Phoenix, parents of special needs children who need services and a place to collect and compare strategies and challenges, and sports teams waiting to spring into being once given a place to swim or run. TPRM can do this. They can. It requires trust in the ordinary citizens far from D.C. who have no desire for a paycheck or a D.C. address.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 762-766). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

God help me, Mr. Hewitt, but this is too good. Why won’t our President cut out the Bannonism and build? This could happen and then much would change. A political change is possible, but only if Trump the builder and not louche Trump prevails.

Dare we dream?

As for immigrants, Hewitt says:

But Donald J. Trump can do what perhaps no other American politician can do: he can reform the immigration system while regularizing the 11 million immigrants in the country without permission and while also building a “wall”— in reality a long, strong, double-row border fence with an interstate running between the two fences for the Border Patrol to travel on quickly. He can do this without any credible number of serious critics branding it an “amnesty” or a “sellout.”

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 806-809). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Who would object?

Not I.

Is this happening? No. It is not.

From Hewitt’s pen to God’s ear, but I am not sure our President is listening.

And now Hope (the Fairest Flower in Christendom) calls me to an episode of The Mentalist. 

III The New and Renewed American Military 

It is now the next day and I have been thinking about this book for the intervening hours.

Hewitt is hopeful, but has crossed from hope to phantasms? If hope is the start of a reasonable faith, then hope that never finds reason in reality becomes chimera . . . dreams drifting about detached from the world as it is.

Hewitt’s hopes connect well to Vice President Pence, Speaker Ryan, and to much of the Cabinet. However, it is hard to see the President, now golfing each weekend, doing the hard work Hewitt describes.

Does he have the ability to be this insightful, loving, and unifying?

I see no evidence of it. The weakness of the Trump administration is Trump and that is a problem. You cannot float the Titanic if the Titanic herself will not float. The noble crew, the brave passengers, the wonderful kitchen . . . nothing will keep the good ship from going down it it is actually a bad ship.

It is now 11:05 AM. Happy Birthday Hope. I will spend my lunch break reading about a new and renewed American military: digestion through mobilization.

Hewitt is speaking truth about our need for a new navy and he has gotten some good blueprints for building one. Of all the things “military” that should worry us, the decline in our ability to project power in two ocean sat once is the biggest. If we do not keep the sea lanes open, then who will? This is not a call to start new wars, but to avoid the old plague of piracy.

Hewitt points out what a naval build up could do for the Great Lakes region. He is right. As one who has family on Lake Ontario, I can testify that we have let our “inland ocean” deteriorate. There are old industrial cities all around this area that could use help and many of them are trusting Trump to give them this help.

The President has good reason to remember his promise of jobs to those of the Great Lakes: they made him President of the United States.

This is the one area where a person can be most sure that Trump will act. He has the strongest team in security and defense and the most consistent rhetoric. If Trump cannot do this, he will do nothing.

IV A Supreme Court and Federal Judiciary that Umpires, Not Plays

It is 11:23 and I am pushing forward as I can. If there is one issue that made many friends who thought about being #neverTrump decide to vote for the President, then it was the Court. Hewitt pressed this case well and the President’s first pick was promising.

Hewitt is easier to understand when you realize how “staggered” (his word) by the death of Justice Scalia. I was sad, knew it was very bad, but Hewitt was gobsmacked by his death.

As a philosopher everyone I revere is dead, but Hewitt must deal with living judges. This is important for us to understand. Plato is in the hands of his text and each generation of his readers must begin with that text whatever stupidity we come to embrace about it. For lawyers, the Constitution can die in a single generation or become so encrusted with judicial barnacles that it vanishes.

Much of the chapter is a fascinating exchange between Hewitt and Justice Breyer. Sadly for Hewitt, our President does not read (by his own admission) so the erudition will not get to the one place it must go. Perhaps the plan is for the arguments to influence the circle around our President and so make things better. I hope so.

Hewitt sums up the importance of the difference an originalist or another Breyer would make this way:

But the core disagreement between him and my school of thought is right there, and it is about humility and deference— judicial humility and deference to the Article I and Article II branches and the sovereign states from the Article III courts. A humility is what informs originalism and asks justices and judges not to overreach the elected branches and the people or the state governments— or only when the Constitution absolutely demands it. That humility is about deferring instead to the people and to their collective judgments, about letting the country work out its arguments through elections and about avoiding abrupt interventions except when the Constitution’s mandate is clear.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1097-1102). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

By way of explaining his position, Hewitt takes some time to defend Chief Justice Roberts for upholding Obamacare as constitutional. The Chief Justice deferred as much as he could to the will of the people as expressed in the legislative and executive branches. Hewitt points out that now both of those two branches have a chance to correct this bad law.

Hewitt is persuasive here and I have changed my mind. I am thankful the Court did not strike down Obamacare!

Hewitt argues that a conservative court will leave “gay marriage” in place in part, because too many people have come to rely on the arrangement. However, he also suggest that those of us who think gay marriage is a moral evil will need the Court to clarify the freedom of religion so this one decision does not end up causing endless civil strife.

Hewitt says:

The debate over same-sex marriage was so ferocious and its casualties so numerous that we need to collectively say “case closed.”

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1268-1269). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

I think this is quite wrong, because the view of sexuality undergirding the decision cannot endure. Like the science undergirding Roe, the science behind “same sex” marriage is bad. One sex cannot fill in for the other in a marriage. Men and women are not the same. A relationship with two different types of humans, right down to brain structure, is not the same as one where women (for example) are no longer needed.

The same movement that pressed for marriage rights also overwhelmingly views a “sexual binary” as wrong. How will the Court consistently avoid the view that a person can pick a gender and demand that the rest of society respect that choice? Doesn’t the moral (and it was scarcely legal) reasoning in the same-sex marriage case demand that eventually gender must change?

One cannot help but suspect that Hewitt  is cutting losses for political reasons. I am unpersuaded that the debate of sexual or gender rights is over. In fact, it has just begun. Those who thought that “gay marriage” would be the end are wrong.

Let’s overturn this bad reasoning and allow states to regulate marriage. As for contracts already in force, they will remain in force.

Hewitt does not think the much older Roe case is “settled law” in part because of raging debate. Yet in the first few years after Roe the political scene was not raging. The bet of the Courts that they could settle the issue looked good. The rise of Evangelical opposition to abortion, so hard to predict around the time of Roe, helped change the discussion.

Who knows if a new generation of feminists (for example) will see any marriage that takes biological marriage out of the equation is good? We cannot predict where the politics is headed. Meanwhile, the Court has decided we have a right to vice.

This is dubious and those parts of the world with growing populations remain dubious about this idea. The future of the United States might end up looking more like the moral values of sub-Saharan Africa or India than the decaying white European populations.

Hewitt comments:

Perhaps because abortion is believed by its opponents to concern the rights of unique humans who are not spoken for or defended in the womb, while marriage is a choice between two consenting people, the surrender by opponents of same-sex marriage is more complete than it ever was— or will be— on the issue of life.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1272-1275). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Has Hewitt researched the state of political opposition right after Roe? Wasn’t there a slowly rising tide of opposition? What will next generation say?

Perhaps because “gay marriage” concerns the state declaring an act that is a vice should be recognized by the state with rights, there will never be a time when significant numbers of Americans simply accept this decision. After all more than a quarter of millennials oppose gay marriage. That is a huge base on which to build a movement.

In any case, Hewitt moves on to suggest a “war room” like an NFL draft for judicial picks. He wants to draft young and fast.

One hopes that Trump drafts better than Hugh’s beloved Cleveland Browns. (Sorry Hugh!)

The heart of the problem with all our Courts and (I would argue) with the culture is that our elite colleges and universities have no diversity on big issues. There are pro-gay rights super-majorities (if not unanimity) at most prestige school in most relevant departments. When it comes to Constitutional originalists, the situation is not much better according to Hewitt.

There is a cartel of ideas that is monopolized by the secular left.

However Democratic overconfidence, particularly that of Harry Reid, gives originalists (and I would argue moral persons) a chance to undue the impact of this monopoly on the Courts.

God bless Harry Reid. He stripped the Democratic Senate minority that exists no from any power to stop Trump’s nominees. A bare majority in the Senate can now change the rules about how anything is done in the Senate thanks to Reid.

Again Hewitt:

. . . a change to the rules of the Senate by a simple majority of senators, not the 66 previously required to change the rules (and when the rule on filibusters had been lowered to 60, it took 66 votes to accomplish that). Once used, a maneuver that changes how the rules are changed changes those rules forever.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1330-1332). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

The Republican majority can approve anyone, even a Justice, with 50 votes (and Vice-President Pence), because they can make the rules for any confirmation as they please with a majority vote.

Thank you Harry Reid!

Hewitt knows this area and he presses for an expansion of the D.C. Circuit (no shout out to the Marvel Circuit?) and breaking up the Ninth Circuit.

Both of these are vital even if they aren’t exciting. The folly of the Ninth Circuit has been one route to many bad decisions and the D.C. Court does much to decide what administrative rules are acceptable.

Fix the Courts, Mr. President!

Hewitt ends with a paean to religious liberty:

I do not believe Obergefell will be overturned, but I do believe, hope, and pray that a Free Exercise Clause equal to the task set out for it by the Framers will reappear and will overprotect rather than underprotect religious liberty. It was for religious liberty that the country was founded in large part. If the election of 2016 keeps secure that liberty and with it the ability of American Christians to evangelize the world, the explanation of why evangelicals and Mass-attending Catholics supported Donald Trump will be self-evident. Belief in the dignity of all people— gay or straight, faith-filled or as nonbelieving as Richard Dawkins— needs to reanimate our Supreme Court decisions, and a genuine protection for a life lived in conformity to conscience must reappear as vibrant as it ever was, as complete as it was imagined by Jefferson and Madison.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1407-1413). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

With this as a Christian I say: “Amen.” and as a citizen “You have my vote.” An atheist who is also an anti-theist should not have to create religious art he finds offensive. A nation that has tolerated and carved out broad exceptions for the Amish can do the same for traditional Catholics, Muslims, and Evangelicals.

Meanwhile back to teaching.

V The Free Market Flourishing

It is 1:15 and I want to stress something. First, preparing for a lecture on Charles Dickens is hard. Second, and more relevant to this live blog, is this: if Hewitt had his way on issue, even where I disagree, this would be a better country.

I don’t think his “gay marriage” and religious freedom compromise can work, but if it could, then it would be better than what we were going to get under a President Clinton.

And so during a break here at 3:07 PM I turn to the free market at President Trump. The President’s desire to help workers was one of the most attractive features of his campaign. Hewitt describes this as a “free market flourishing” and rightly points out that conservatives see some role for government and should eschew ideological inflexibility.

Some taxes can be raised Some taxes can be cut. The death tax should be eliminated for most Americans.

Hewitt is at his very best when he argues against being a blind ideologue. I don’t agree with him on some issues (see above), but most of Hewitt’s plan is better than getting what the Democratic Party was promising me.

He takes on our team, which can be purists to the point of insanity, here:

Most tax theorists, but especially the purists of the “Austrian school,” wouldn’t mind condemning most Americans to a life of economic upheaval if they could just have their way on crazy ideas like eliminating the mortgage interest deduction. I understand they read books by Austrian economists and attend seminars where everyone nods in agreement about the need for ending market distortions. But politics says they are nuts.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1435-1438). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

I once set with a group of these folk who said I was a socialist, because I favored some government oversight on workplace conditions. After all, by the time the free market caught up with Union Carbide, they had killed my grandfather with asbestos. My Nana got a small pension, but she would have preferred Papaw. Frankly the sort of purism that sees no role for government in protecting the little person is inhumane and impractical!

Hewitt puts it this way:

Most tax theorists, but especially the purists of the “Austrian school,” wouldn’t mind condemning most Americans to a life of economic upheaval if they could just have their way on crazy ideas like eliminating the mortgage interest deduction. I understand they read books by Austrian economists and attend seminars where everyone nods in agreement about the need for ending market distortions. But politics says they are nuts.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1435-1438). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

As they would have said in the shop, “Tell those @#%@@%, Hugh. ” The Baptists in the shop would said, “Yep.” Hewitt is right to view killing the few deductions most of us can use (home, charity) as killing the GOP.

Hewitt pivots to the attractive Trump, not the name brand hawking steaks and a fake University, but the earlier better man who understood the people in the shop:

President Trump understands this because, once upon a time, he and his father built housing for people in the middle class. They know what owning a home means to people.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1441-1443). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

I don’t own a home right now, having had to short sell when we left California to Texas. This year we might be able to buy. Hewitt is right: to punish the middle class just as we are recovering from the Great Recession would doom Republicans. Homes are where we save. Hope and I love The Saint Constantine School and hope to retire from taking a salary someday and because we own a home nearby be able to keep hanging out until we cannot. That is a very middle class choice.

Hugh Hewitt is right: defend the middle class.

His entitlement reform is less sensible. I am 53 and if he were to have his way, my retirement will be put off by three years. This is fine with me actually, since I am in a job I will not quit until I must (inshallah), but this seems just as hard on the middle class and the poor as home ownership.

What about means testing entitlements? Is this the only thing that will work?

Hewitt says:

This entitlement reform stuff is uncontroversial outside the Beltway if the unified GOP government keeps its delayed impact to those under the age of fifty-five.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1493-1495). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

I am dubious that my friends will think this way, but let’s try it. It seems worth a try.

Hewitt’s brilliant suggestion is make tax reform, entitlement reform, and medical reform all the same bill. Take the pain. Win the battle. Fix the system.

This fits Trump, but also would be the salvation of our taxed budget and our hurting people. Better care for the needy, less graft for lawyers who game the system. Read the book. The plan is there.

Hugh Hewitt makes brilliant use of CS Lewis “inner ring” idea. This notion has guided my entire career. The sin of the inner ring is the desire to be inside where the power is. In our kindergarten, it is to have the best Pokemon cards. In our college, to be Dr. Bartel’s best student.

The desire to be one of the cool kids, the insiders, is very powerful. In academic terms, the power is on the left. I am constantly tempted to temper my own conservative politics or Christian faith for crumbs of power. The few heroes like Professor Robbie George that can sit at the center of academic power and resist are my guides.

Hewitt points out that the inner ring in Washington is power. They have it, more power than any group of men have ever had and it is intoxicating. As a result, they forget. What do the forget? They forget what other people value or even what power is for.

This much is true: Trump does not give a damn about that inner ring, he has own demons, and so might blow the who things apart.

(Here I shall be impertinent: is there an “inner ring” in Christian media? Few are willing to do what Hewitt does and take on the President when he disagrees. I see much rot from “personalities” in our movement, but that is for another time.)

Here Hewitt avoids a system crash by respecting the expertise of government (listen President Trump!), but not bowing to their political skills. A man might know how.

Speaking of envy, Hewitt talks about Larry Arn and his conversations with the man. I don’t envy the radio time, but I do envy Larry talking to Hugh. Hey Hugh: we do Plato and the ancients here! We do the Church Fathers better than Hillsdale, really. Cove over and teach us! Let’s talk!

Sigh.

Because I think President Arn is deeply wrong about Donal Trump. He is not optimistic, but opportunistic. (Way to win friend!) Hewitt says:

“Something fundamental is afoot,” Dr. Arnn also said. “This election is really about whether the government shall govern the people or the people govern the government.” High-sounding words, but true, and Arnn was right more often than anyone else about Donald Trump and his appeal— and Arnn does not live inside the Beltway and does not do much media.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1611-1614). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

This is just so wrong, that one should go read The Republic until Book VIII and IX are burned into the head. A slight man, an unserious man, drew an inside straight and won, because his opponent was a so bad.

He lies all the time. He lies to my fellow West Virginians and we bought his con. He might turn out better than he is, and I was with Hugh Hewitt until this bit, but Larry Arn wrapping Trump (and the voters) in Lincoln is (bluntly) absurd.

Trump ran on nothing like this “Fourth Way”  . . . though a man as good and clever as Hewitt (and Arn) can dream it is so. He has no more respect for academic knowledge than he has for government knowledge. There is nothing in his history that says he is a serious man.

His voters were fooled and so behaved foolishly. The bigotry of low expectations is as bad as the thinking West Virginians are dumb hillbillies. Too many of us believed Ted Cruz’ Dad killed JFK, Obama was born in Kenya (Trump’s claim to political fame!), and was a Muslim. Crime is down. Trump says it is up and we believe him. Immigrants do not commit crime. Trump lies and we believe him.

We were fooled. We bought the con.

Now we both can hope the conman will do better than we have a right to expect he will. God bless Hugh Hewitt for trying it out . . . and Larry Arn, but to dress Donald John Trump up in Lincoln is just a con of a different sort: conning ourselves.

Yes, the elite underestimated Lincoln and called him a baboon, but read Lincoln. We do in our great books program . . . and after thousands of hours of discussion, I can assure you that Lincoln (who wrote his own stuff) is in another dimension from Trump. The early Lincoln would have whipped him soundly, the later Lincoln would cut him down to size with a Biblical reference tied to a clear analogy.

This part of the book may persuade some, but this anti-intellectual, the first President in my lifetime who does not read books, is not even William Jennings Bryan. Our best hope is that he lets his team do all the work. He is howlingly ignorant about everything, but self-promotion.

There I will concede he did well.

To think the people who were conned (not even a plurality) knew what they were getting is to demean those people. If you think you will get rich at the multi-level marketing meeting, then you need someone to say “no” and not someone who dresses up your bad decision with Smith and Burke and Locke.

This part of the book is . . . sad.

Hewitt says some very sensible things about taxes. I agree with all of them. I bet most of them happen, but nothing will compensate for the degrading influence of teaching people that when a our First “Lady” reads the Lord’s Prayer from a teleprompter that God is back in the White House. (Why the scare quotes around Lady? My Nana would not have called Mrs. Trump a lady and I refuse to degrade our language by making believe.)

We are governed by a roue and we must hope for mercy. He is our President now, but to put him in Lincoln’s clothes is to pretend that we were not suckers for a con. We were. Now we must hope reality forces the conman to govern well.

This is man so offensive that he attacked a judge using racist language and who bragged about sexual assault. Hugh Hewitt called him out both times. We cannot fantasize that he has called us like Lincoln to a great crusade where truth is marching on. To do so is embrace alternative facts.

Hewitt would never lied or degrade the language or peddle a Trump that does not exist as if he does, but it is being done. We might have better taxes, but if we encourage people to be dupes, then we have failed as educators and leaders.

My favorite unimportant President Garfield was an advocate of Civil Service Reform. Hugh Hewitt, my favorite talk radio guy and third favorite lawyer, says it has gone too far. We have killed the spoils system where the party in party gives out jobs based on politics. Now we have the world-without-end jobs in government that attract too many that are mediocre, or government lovers, or time servers.

His solution is quite sound:

The Fourth Way will empower new appointees to fire large numbers of tenured civil servants and do so peremptorily. A handful will be wrongly dismissed, but most are living on paychecks they do not really earn, the costs of which are contributed by people who work too hard to be so poorly served. Worst of all, these bureaucrats have ignored their missions. Had genuine environmentalists been in charge of the Fish and Wildlife Service for the past thirty years, there wouldn’t be an unfunded or unfinished habitat management plan for endangered species in the United States. They don’t know how to do it. They lack the skills. If President Trump attended one week of meetings at any of these three agencies, he’d resign in despair. The Fourth Way requires a massive rewrite of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Agency heads must be able to fire 5 percent of their workforce for any reason whatsoever every year. That simple authority will do the trick. Impose on the individual bureaucrats the actual, genuine prospect of unemployment in the morning and they will show up, sit up, listen, and get to work.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1743-1750). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

This is brilliant.

VI “Impeachment’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose” 

It is 5:41. Day is done. I got to talk about ancient Greek marriage practices, got teased by a first grader, and talked to a college student about the state of the world. I am celebrating Hope’s birthday soon.

Hugh Hewitt is a great man in a time of small men and I admire his hope, optimism, and vision casting. His Fourth Way is a good way and I want it to happen . . . even when I disagree.

I strongly disagree with pretending that we did not make a disastrous mistake in nominating Donald John Trump and a worse one in making him President. (Secretary Clinton would have bad, but less hopefully since she knew what she wanted.)

Conservatives missed a once-a-generation chance to elect a change agent We elected a conman and now good men like Hugh Hewitt are making the best of it. We still love him, the polls tell me, and so that is wise of Hewitt.

Let’s make the best of it. Yet: Delenda est Bannonism.

Now Hewitt is brave enough to turn to how things could turn out badly. I have written about this and must concede that I think Donald John Trump was unfit for office the day he took it. A reasonable person would disqualify him for his behavior with women. Voters disagreed.

He is my President and so I am hoping he does better than reason would indicate he will.

If you doubt my admiration for Mr. Hewitt read this paragraph:

Democrats would never impeach one of their own. Never. Republicans already have. And if all goes wrong, whether very quickly, as Brooks suggests, or possibly in a longer arc, as I fear is at least somewhat possible, then impeachment will be back in the news, as it already has been twice in my lifetime. I’m only sixty, and have vivid memories of two such instances, and now have to confess the idea of the impeachment of President Trump is hardly a fantasy.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1763-1766). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

No blind partisan writes this. I am sure he thinks I am too hard on Trump and the arguments for him. I hope to remain his friend. I will certainly remain an admirer, because this paragraph show a rarity: a man willing to look at what will happen if the Fourth Way goes wrong.

I will be happy to be wrong, but Hewitt is willing to consider doom. I do not want to be right. Hewitt wants to be right, but considers what happens if he is wrong.

His is the more intellectual courageous position.

He makes this point about Republicans:

Democrats would never impeach one of their own. Never. Republicans already have. And if all goes wrong, whether very quickly, as Brooks suggests, or possibly in a longer arc, as I fear is at least somewhat possible, then impeachment will be back in the news, as it already has been twice in my lifetime. I’m only sixty, and have vivid memories of two such instances, and now have to confess the idea of the impeachment of President Trump is hardly a fantasy.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1763-1766). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Where I disagree is that President Trump will self-regulate. He has (for the most part) picked good people. His inner circle is very weak, and in one case potentially dangerous (if Bannon believes in Bannonism), but his behavior has been reckless. He lies in press conferences. He is mixing business, pleasure, and politics at Mar Lago in unprecedented ways. He is impulsive and says globally disturbing things on Twitter.

President Trump is seventy years old and with louche behavior for decades. Why would he change?

VII Conclusion

It is 6:02 and dinner is done. I return to the text and Hewitt’s summation. This has been an important book, a hopeful book, a must read book. Even if (as I think probable), in the future this book will seem like thinking we have gone through the wardrobe to Narnia when we have taken one step further towards General Woundwort in Watership Down. 

Hewitt is a wise man willing to say he did not think Donald John Trump would or could be President.

He is willing to say he was wrong. Where we always disagreed was that Mr. Trump should not be President. I do not think the risk worth the reward. I not think the further degradation of the moral of the Party and movement, which could barely get rid of MILO, was worth it.

I still think that. In fact, the madness and lies from the President since he took office make me more sure of it. The team is splendid, but the Captain looks like a drunk on his own narcism. Pence can only clean up for so long. Mattis endure so much.

But Hewitt is wise, persuasive and fences well. Let me let him have the last word.

Remember the key metric: the ongoing, incremental expansion of liberty and literacy at home and in a growing number of stable regimes around the world. President Trump can lead through four years in which that metric expands dramatically. He can indeed win and win and win. Or he could fail. Terribly. Cataclysmically. Though it is hard to imagine he could fail in a more thorough way than President Obama failed, President Trump could indeed be worse than the president best known for six words and two sentences: “leading from behind,” “red line,” “JVs,” and “If you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too.” That’s a massive amount of failure in a small number of words. But President Trump can surpass that. Or it could be a glorious and surprising time to be an American. It could be a wonderful time to be alive. We could be citizens who witness and participate in a massive shift in priorities toward freedom and in the principles at the heart of the Declaration, in the Preamble of the Constitution, and in the spirit of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.

Hewitt, Hugh (2017-01-24). The Fourth Way: The Conservative Playbook for a Lasting GOP Majority (Kindle Locations 1845-1853). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

OK. I will take the last word: buy the book. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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