Young Guns : A New Generation of Conservative Leaders (4 page)

America is ready for a new direction—the country urgently
needs
a new direction—the only question is: who is going to provide it? The people we talk to and hear from everyday have made it clear that they’re not in love with either party these days. Republicans controlled Washington from 2001 to 2006. They did some good things but they also did a lot to give conservatism a bad name. Then Democrats took power and their one party rule for the past year and a half has made “liberal” a fighting word. Neither party has addressed a building crisis in America; a crisis of government spending and growth that, if continued unchecked, will—not
might
but
will
—change our country from a place where every generation does better than the last into a place where every generation piles more debt and more burden on the next.

Now, when politicians start talking about a brewing
“crisis” in the land, most Americans rightly reach for their wallets. We’re getting far too used to the overheated rhetoric of crisis and redemption coming from Washington. But there’s something different about the challenge we face today. It’s not a phony “crisis” Washington is cooking up to sell the public on its latest big government scheme. The message is being sent from the people to Washington today, not the other way around. Americans are anxious about their own financial futures and the country’s financial future. They’re worried about a government that is getting bigger and more controlling, and yet somehow still not addressing the issues they most care about.

Last February, about a year into the Obama presidency, a remarkable poll came out that sent this message loud and clear. CNN conducted a national survey in which a majority of Americans said they believe the federal government has become so large and so powerful it is trampling on their rights as ordinary citizens. Let me say it again—
most Americans believe government is so big it is depriving them of their rights
. As you might expect, more Republicans feel this way than Democrats, but a remarkable 63 percent of independents said they also believe their government is a threat to them. By overwhelming margins, Americans told CNN that they believe their government is broken. But in typical American fashion, overwhelming margins also hold out hope that their government can be fixed.

Paul, Kevin, and I don’t “hold out hope” that America can get back on track, we
know
it can. But we’re not about
happy talk and empty promises. Americans bet on hope and change in 2008, but it hasn’t worked out as promised. That doesn’t mean, however, that the voters will automatically turn around and put their money on the other party. The need for a change in direction is urgent, but Americans are tired of gambling on soaring rhetoric and unfulfilled promises. They’re feeling played by Washington and the special interests that control so many of the state capitals. The next group of leaders to get their vote is going to have to earn it the old-fashioned way: with real solutions to real problems.

I remember the moment I realized my party had lost its way. It was the morning of November 6, 2005. I opened the Sunday paper and saw the cover of
Parade
magazine. It featured a full color mock-up of the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska, the bridge that was to become the national symbol of an out-of-control Congress drunk on pork barrel spending.

Under the headline “Are Your Tax Dollars Being Wasted?” the
Parade
article described how, the previous summer, Congress had appropriated $223 million to build a bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska (population 8,200), to tiny Gravina Island (population 50). This lavish gift from
Washington, the magazine reported, amounted to $23,000 for each and every resident of Ketchikan.

The nation was still reeling from the scenes of devastation and corresponding government incompetence we all saw in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Washington had not exactly covered itself in glory in response to that disaster, and now Americans were learning that Congress was writing $223 million checks to obscure towns in Alaska with well-connected congressional representatives. I thought to myself, “What does anyone in Richmond—or Miami, Dayton, Denver, or anywhere else, for that matter—care about a bridge in Alaska and why should they be asked to pay for it?”

In retrospect, the signs that the Republican Party had become the party of Washington—instead of the party that wanted to change Washington—had been around for some time. I’m not one who blindly follows polls, but as part of the leadership in the Republican-controlled Congress, even before the
Parade
cover I had been noticing that we were receiving steadily declining performance reports from the American people. There was a distance developing between my party and the people we were sworn to serve. Those who were a proud part of the Reagan Revolution no longer recognized the party he left behind. Week after week and month after month, the news got worse. Even for someone more inclined to follow his principles than the polls, it was an ominous development.

Somehow, in those months and years, my Republican
colleagues and I began to realize that the principles that we thought we were about just weren’t being borne out in what was coming out of Washington. Life in the capital can be insulating. It can be hard to know how much of what goes on inside the beltway, under the Capitol Dome, really penetrates out there in America. After all, people have lives to live, jobs to get to, families to raise. America, sensibly in my view, looks to Washington to do the basics—provide for the common defense, keep the playing field level, spend as little as possible of their money—spend it wisely—and stay out of their way. But when I saw the
Parade
cover I realized that not only were we not living up to that expectation, we were going in the opposite direction. And Americans knew it. The public was clearly paying attention to what was going on in Washington—and they didn’t like what they were seeing. Americans were coming to the conclusion that we no longer shared their desire for a less intrusive government, were no longer serious about fiscal responsibility, and no longer stood tall as the party of reform. And once the American people lost their trust in us, it wasn’t too long before they didn’t renew our lease in the Capitol.

What had gone wrong? Republicans had earned control of Congress in the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 by offering a clear, accountable alternative to business as usual. It’s already hard to remember, but 1994 was the first time since 1952 that Republicans had a majority in the House of Representatives. For forty years, there had been one party rule in the House. How did congressional Democrats in Washington
hold onto power for so long? By building a machine dedicated to delivering pork-barrel funds to the liberal special interests that delivered the votes to keep them in power, that’s how. This is the corruption that is at the heart of every political machine. Any notion of a common good—or a principle more important than the perpetuation of the machine itself—is lost. Power becomes the object of governing, not listening to and responding to the concerns of the people.

It was only a matter of time before this corruption caught up with the Democratic majority, and by the early 1990s catch up with them it did. In 1989, Democrat Jim Wright became the first House Speaker to resign because of scandal. He was followed by Democratic whip Tony Coelho soon after. Then came the House banking scandal and the post office scandal, which led to the jailing of Ways and Means Committee chairman Dan Rostenkowski. Democrats had been in power so long they no longer felt the rules applied to them.

In 1994, the Contract with America promised an end to all that; it promised an end to the lack of accountability and an end to arrogant Washington congressional lifers taking and spending the people’s money with impunity. The Contract with America made ten promises to the American people. Elect us, it said, and hold us accountable for making sure that the laws that apply to the country apply equally to Congress; make sure we open up committee meetings to the public and balance the budget. If we don’t
fulfill our promises, kick us out. If we do and you let us stay, we’ll stick around as long as we have something useful to contribute to the country.

But the revolution of 1994 wasn’t just about the slate of policy reforms to make Washington live under the rules that the rest of American has to live with. The Contract with America and the spirit of change it represented also drew a different kind of Republican public servant to Congress. These men and women weren’t the same kind of Washington lifers and timeservers that had dominated the sclerotic Democratic majority. They were what Paul and Kevin and I call “citizen legislators.” They were ordinary people, not political professionals. Doctors. Small businessmen. Veterans—men and women from all different walks of life. The 1994 election brought in Republicans like Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a practicing obstetrician who pledged to serve only three terms in the House, did so, left office, and is now a United States Senator. Also in the House, North Carolina businesswoman Sue Myrick was elected, as well as Texas rancher Mac Thornberry and Arizona attorney John Shadegg.

The Republican class of 1994 in the House of Representatives delivered on every one of its promises in the Contract with America. They kept their word. Not every item in the Contract was enacted into law, but every single one received a fair hearing, an open debate, and an up or down vote. Not only that, but they worked with a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, to reform welfare on Republican
terms. They provided proof that good ideas and goodwill can bridge the partisan divide in Washington. That’s the way the system is supposed to work, whichever party is in charge. That’s the way the American people expect it to work, and deserve for it to work. And for those promising weeks and months around the 1994 elections, the system did work.

But once much of the Contract had been fulfilled, and the votes had been taken and the promises kept, business in Washington slowly began to revert to business as usual. As the years went by, congressional Republicans began to give in to the temptations that had been the undoing of their predecessors. The leadership of the party changed, and slowly but surely, the GOP began to build their own political machine to match the Democratic machine they had replaced. Republicans were becoming more concerned with winning than governing. But the two go hand in hand.

The 1994 election had been a message from America to Washington. Americans are principled, but we’re not ideologues. We don’t put politics first and foremost in our lives, but we are a center-right nation. I believe the principles of my party best represent the principles of a center-right nation. We are the party of limited government, of free markets, and family values. But when Republicans finally achieved a measure of control in Washington, too often they left these principles behind. They became what they had campaigned against: arrogant and out of touch. There were important exceptions, but the GOP legislative agenda
became primarily about Republican members themselves, not the greater cause.

That’s what the current earmark culture is all about. It’s the fuel that feeds the political machine. In the machine, you get your piece of the pie to keep yourself in power and you do the same for your fellow members. The implicit deal among members of the machine is this: you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours; you support my pork projects and I’ll be there to support yours. Both parties have been guilty of this. And for both parties, the result has been the same: the illegal corruption of the process leads to members indicted and behind bars, and the legal corruption of the process leads to voters tossing out the incumbent party.

I witnessed this culture first hand when I came to Congress in 2001. Washington DC is just 110 miles up the road from my hometown of Richmond, but it may as well have been 10,000 miles away.

There I was, proud and privileged to be the representative from the 7th District of Virginia. I had been elected to the congressional seat once held by James Madison. But what I encountered in Washington DC was anything but Madisonian.

I had come
from
a place that, while not perfect, values and encourages entrepreneurialism. I had come
to
a place that knows little and seems to care even less about the struggles of small businesspeople.

I had come
from
a place that believes in hard work being
rewarded. I had come
to
a place where special interests are rewarded.

In Virginia, we reject intolerance and respect religious liberty. We don’t spend money we don’t have. And we understand the need for accountability, be it in ourselves, our children, or our local communities.

But these days Washington is engaged in an assault on religion in the public square. They’re spending like there’s no tomorrow. And accountability is something they seem to insist on only for the previous administration, not for themselves.

Needless to say, the culture shock for me in first encountering the nation’s capital was pretty severe. I felt a little like George Taylor, Charlton Heston’s character in the
Planet of the Apes
must have upon discovering the foundering Statue of Liberty on the beach. What was happening to my country?