Hugh Hewitt: What I like is that he’s a voracious reader, not only your books, but things like The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, Mark Steyn’s America Alone. I think this is pretty rare these days, to find curiosity at that level, and at that sort of voracious appetite for information. What do you talk about with him?I'd like to see Gov. Romney debate Rudy Giuliani and John McCain on foreign policy issues. I believe we would quickly see who really has the better qualifications and ability to handle foreign policy.Victor Davis Hanson: Well, we talk about history just like you and I talk about. We talk about foreign policy, he talked about the plan or the effort to democratize the Middle East, the shortfalls, the problems, the liabilities, and you know what? He [Gov. Romney] came to the Hoover Institution and got in front of 40 senior fellows. And in that room there were Nobel Prize winners, a lot of egos, too. And he held court with them, and there were a lot of hostile questions, and he went for an hour and a half, head to head, with these people. When he walked out of that room, I think everybody was impressed with him. He didn’t pull any punches, and he could argue and was as logical as any Hoover fellow, and I was more impressed with him than I was with my colleagues.
(The Hugh Hewitt Show, March 13, 2007)
It's a lot of words, that's for sure. But his solutions boil down to three things: buildup of the US military, energy independence, and a world conference of civilized nations including moderate Muslim states.
I'm fine with the first objective, but it is going to be very tough to do. The rules of engagement being used in Afghanistan and Iraq have discouraged the gung-ho attitude that young Americans displayed when signing up in record numbers after 9/11. A decent economy means that we must up military pay in order to add the 100,000 troops that Romney calls for.
Energy independence is also a great idea, but there are various ways to accomplish it. Allowing drilling in areas that eco-nuts want to keep 100% pristine is the "easy" part. The alternative energy part of his proposal is what worries me. I can see many millions, even billions of dollars flushed down the pipes to chase crackpot schemes that are just pie-in-the-sky. I remember how much waste went into solar energy research and deployment during the Carter years.
Finally, we have experience in dealing with other nations, it's been called "the United Nations". We need to make peace and cooperative ventures with other nations, but we need to assert ourselves against Chinese piracy, NATO indifference, and African corruption. Romney's statement :
"I envision that the summit would lead to the creation of a Partnership for Prosperity and Progress: a coalition of states that would assemble resources from developed nations and use them to support public schools (not Wahhabi madrasahs), microcredit and banking, the rule of law, human rights, basic health care, and free-market policies in modernizing Islamic states. These resources would be drawn from public and private institutions and from volunteers and nongovernmental organizations," sounds like a lot of economic kumbahyah.
I don't think so.
These are not the words of a political opportunist. These are the words of someone who clearly understands what he is talking about, having studied the issues in depth. These are the words of someone who has considered many different options and has come to his own conclusions, believes passionately in them, is willing and able to clearly articulate them and is motivated to do what it takes to work towards his vision of a better world.
That's my take on this. But then, you know me... ;-)