My trip to Washington, D.C., earlier this week produced columns about the late Jack Kemp and about current Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, but those columns left out some worthwhile odds, ends, and ideas. Those odds and ends may not combine for a cohesive column, but they are worth memorializing.
Larry Kudlow, now director of the National Economic Council, had this to say of Kemp: “Jack was always interested in how to persuade. … He believed the best arguments you could make were fact-filled arguments. He would prefer a fact to a smear. He would acknowledge that a person who would disagree might have a point. … The art of talking to people who don’t necessarily agree with you, in present day Washington, is something of a lost art.”
Rep. Will Hurd had this to say: “America has become an exceptional nation not because of what we have taken, but because of what we have given. Our policies abroad and at home must align with our ideals.” And, Hurd quoting Kemp from the 1976 Republican National Convention: “History turns on ideas. Ideas rule the world. … We must translate them into a plan of action that both inspires people and wins elections.”
From Sen. Tim Scott: “You can think your way out of poverty.”
From Sen. Marco Rubio: “The lack of productive work is corrosive to the human spirit.”
From former House Speaker Paul Ryan: “The condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life. [But] if we don’t reinvigorate the conservative movement in a way that is inclusive, in a way that speaks to a nontraditionally Republican group of people, then we won’t have much of a future.”
And, from Sasse, a series of observations.
On major challenges facing the United States: “The long-term technology race with China; the massive disruption to the nature and duration of work, of jobs; the fact that we have made retirement promises that are going to bankrupt our kids. … Also, we haven’t taught the American people the value of alliances. … We should be having vigorous debates today about 2030, but instead we are pretending that it’s important when soap salesmen scream, ‘Extra, extra, the end of the world is nigh today,’ or that tomorrow is really the arrival of heaven or hell or ultimately determinative of the 2020 election, which is heaven or hell. … But I want us to talk about 2030. … We should be rank-ordering what are the three or five biggest problems Americans are facing in the next 10 years, and then figuring which ones are amenable to legislative fixes. Because many of them are not fixable by law, but by culture.”
And, finally, more from Sasse: “We must rediscover our Kempian, Tocquevillian voice about who Americans are and what we believe, and pass that on to the next generation, just like people such as Ben Franklin and Ronald Reagan exhorted us to do. Like Kemp, we need to live out a beautiful picture of how to celebrate America.”
