The Grand Old Party, after a time in the wilderness, is now back in business. It commands both Houses of Congress and now, for the first time in 12 years, has a realistic chance of choosing a presidential candidate who can actually beat whichever raddled, shop-worn "Democrat" emerges from the blue primaries. It may yet win the trifecta and command the third House of the legislature – the White House.
To an admirer and beneficiary of the hereditary system of family based government like me, there is something endearing about the notion that the United States, having hooted and hollered at the time of independence about getting rid of orders of hereditary nobility, may have a choice between two social-register families on the political A-list that already regard the White House as their fiefdom – the Clintons and the Bushes.
Yet choosing either would be a mistake, for one overriding reason. It was their dynasties that got Uncle Sam so heavily into debt that there is not the slightest realistic prospect that anyone who now makes the mistake of lending money to the U.S. government will ever get it repaid.
No country as heavily indebted as the United States has ever emerged from that magnitude of national debt without a violent and often revolutionary dislocation of the social fabric. The monstrous debt that will prove to be Mr. Obama's enduring legacy, and that will soon make him one of the most hated and reviled figures in American history, may yet even break your nation apart and destroy it. That is how serious it is.
And that is why neither la Clinton nor anyone from Obama's now-Marxist party, which viscerally hates America and sullenly intends to destroy it, should be allowed anywhere near the levers of power ever again.
What, then, of the other Republican frontrunners? I propose, somewhat arbitrarily, to narrow the field to three serious candidates and one joke candidate. The serious candidates are Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Scott Walker. The joke candidate is Donald Trump.
Let us dispose of the joker before looking at the rest of the pack. Donald Trump has made a lot of money in real estate, and America is fascinated by money, and by his bouffant political style.
There is no doubt that Mr. Trump's understanding of how many beans make five (a quality entirely lacking in Mr. Obama or in Lady Clinton, for instance) would be of some advantage in that, unlike Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz, he would understand the gravity of America's debt crisis.
However, he lacks three qualities which are at present essential to the new leader of your nation. First, he is unsubtle. Like many successful and larger-than-life businessmen, and like the Roman centurion in conversation with the Lord of Life, he says to one, "Come," and he cometh, and to another, "Go," and he goeth. He is used to giving orders but unused to taking advice and unwilling not to get his own way.
Politics is the art of making possible what is necessary and right, and then doing it. Trump lacks the ability to compromise without losing sight of the objective. His bunco-booth barker's brand of "F--k you" arrogance is the chief reason why he would be a catastrophic and ineffectual president.
Secondly, he has no gravitas. In the vigorous language of 18th-century English politics, where he would have been right at home, he is "all side and no bottom." If you did not at once bristle when I described him as the joke candidate, you will already have understood what I mean.
Thirdly, he has no staying power. Recall, for instance, his series of statements about Mr. Obama's Mickey Mouse "birth certificate," still there for all to see at the crime scene that is the White House website. He had the means and the contacts to ensure that the forgery was properly investigated. Had he stuck with the issue and seen it through, he would have been a shoo-in for president. But he dropped the ball. This is the hallmark of a flibbertigibbet. You don't want one of those as your president.
The three qualities that will be more necessary than ever to the next president are subtlety, gravitas and staying power, for those are the qualities that are the minimum requirement for solving the problem of America's debt. Trump lacks all three.
Then there is Jeb Bush, who, like all of his tribe, is thoughtful, widely read and reasonably experienced in government. However, he lacks political sex appeal. He has not got what used to be called "It." The Yiddish word for people like him is nebbish, from the Hebrew nebech, which signifies a person of no account. As the saying goes, an empty taxi draws up, and Jeb Bush gets out.
He is too much part of the establishment to understand that it was the establishment that got America into the mess she is now in, and it has absolutely no idea how to get her out of it. As president, he would prove as amiably pointless as the previous Bush.
Then there is Ted Cruz. I had the opportunity to hear him speak at a rubber-chicken fund-raiser for his senatorial campaign in his home state of Texas. He is without doubt one of the most polished and electrifying political speakers I have had the privilege to hear. On the stump, during the campaign, he would prove the most attractive of the candidates.
I was not in the least surprised that he won the first TV debate by a comfortable margin. Like me, he is trained in the forensic arts, and that – particularly during the campaign – would be an advantage not to be sniffed at.
But his record in the Senate has been disappointing. He has jumped, Romney-like, from one policy position to another in a disconcerting fashion, though his views – insofar as he holds them long enough to be discerned – are generally sound. He would not handle the debt question with sufficient determination to settle it.
Which brings me to Gov. Scott Walker. He is the least well-known of my four front-runners, and has not yet set his stamp on the campaign. For he is not as self-publicizing as Trump, not as long-standing as Bush, not as sweet-talking as Cruz.
However, as governor of Wisconsin, which was bankrupt when he took office, he set to work at once on doing what none of the other three would have thought or been able to do. He hit the telephones and spoke to everyone who mattered, on both sides in politics, and convinced enough of them to work with him in a sensible bipartisan co-operation that he succeeded in saving the state from going bust and being unable to pay the wages of its public servants.
In thus succeeding, he earned the undying enmity of the Marxist left. The public-service unions led a multi-million-dollar recall election campaign against him, but he gently, firmly faced them down and – to the fury of their supporters throughout the Marxstream media – he won. Wisconsin is no longer bankrupt.
It is for this reason that Gov. Scott Walker is this column's nominee and recommendation for president of the United States. He will need proper funding for his campaign, so I urge all lovers of the United States to see that he gets it. He will also need the best speech writer on the planet to help him to advance his public profile to the point where everyone becomes aware that he is the man for the job. I am available to him, should his people care to ask.
Step forward Scott Walker. Your country needs you and, if it is lucky enough and wise enough, it will get you. And that will be of great benefit to Britain, which is every bit as bankrupt as the United States, but which lacks any politician of your caliber. We need to learn from you how to contain our own galloping debt crisis. For the sake of Britain as well as America, you must win.
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