A Blueprint for Success

Cybercast News Service ^ | 10-10-05 | Ed Feulner

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A Blueprint for Success

By Ed Feulner

CNSNews.com Commentary

October 10, 2005

If there's one thing Washington, D.C., is famous for, it's words. Here, we boast the greatest speech-per-capita ratio in the country, if not the world.

But occasionally, a speech stands out and stands the test of time. That's not necessarily because of the speaker's eloquence or verbosity. George Washington never publicly read aloud his Farewell Address, and Abraham Lincoln finished his 272-word Gettysburg Address so quickly the photographer didn't even have a chance to take his picture. No, great speeches provide listeners with a compass they can use to navigate into the future.

Ronald Reagan did this with his famous speech "A Time for Choosing" in 1964, an address that laid the girders of the modern conservative movement. Now, Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., has followed Reagan's lead. His Sept. 26 address to the Young America's Foundation reflected back on Reagan and looked toward the future.

"Our party and you, its rising generation of new leaders, face an age-old choice," Pence told the YAF. "A choice between the belief in limited government and tradition and the siren song of the central planner who says, 'Big government is good government if it's our government.'"

As Pence noted, the cost of government is skyrocketing, and Republicans in Washington haven't done enough to control that. He used the nautical concept of "dead reckoning" to illustrate the idea that conservatives must remember where we started if we're going to lead the country forward. "Conservatives know that government that governs least governs best," Pence said.

"Conservatives know that as government expands, freedom contracts. Conservatives know that government never should do for a man what he can and should do for himself. And conservatives know that societies are judged by how they deal with the most vulnerable: the unborn, the aged, the infirm and the disabled."

Pence then laid out what conservatives must do if they want to govern according to their principles.

"All of the 'Big Three' agenda items outlined by the president in his State of the Union Address are worthy of vigorous conservative support," he said. "Modernizing Social Security by introducing the option of personal savings accounts for younger Americans. Overhauling the Internal Revenue Code, without a tax increase, to achieve a system that is simpler and fairer for taxpaying Americans. Reforming the legal system to end the hidden tax that frivolous lawsuits place on our manufacturing and health-care economies."

Plus, "House conservatives should put on the green eyeshades to put our fiscal house in order." Runaway spending is endangering the conservative goal of limited government, and Pence is correct to insist that conservatives must do something about it.

But, "in addition to what we must do, there is legislation that conservatives must undo to advance the freedom agenda," Pence warned the YAF. First, he called on conservatives to repeal the "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act," which he said violates the First Amendment.

"Second, conservatives must undo the Medicare Prescription Drug entitlement," Pence warned. And there's not much time for this step, since the law takes effect in just a few months. Third, Pence said, "Conservatives must undo the expansion of the federal government's role in our local schools by reforming the No Child Left Behind Act to embrace the principle that education is a state and local function."

Pence's speech is especially important because, while it lays out a series of steps conservatives should take today, it -- like Reagan's 1964 address -- also provides a blueprint we will be able to turn to in years to come.

"These are difficult days in which we live: Threats at home and abroad, expansion of government and erosion of values," Pence announced. "But I am not discouraged nor should you be." With leaders such as Pence to inspire us, there's no reason any of us should be.

(Ed Feulner is the president of The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based public policy research institute.

Copyright 2005, The Heritage Foundation