A century and a half ago, British liberal philosopher/politician John Stuart Mill tagged his country's Conservatives as "the Stupid Party." Hopelessly out of power now for more than a decade, and moving left, Britain's Tories continue to live up to the moniker.
But their counterparts on this side of the ocean, Republicans, often prove to be at least as stupid. Right after the dynamic and historic choice of Michael Steele as Republican national chairman, a New England Republican senator has agreed to come aboard the Obama administration.
In becoming the new president's secretary of commerce, Gregg is the third GOPer to join the cabinet, with Bush holdover Robert Gates at the Pentagon and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Gregg also pre-empts for himself what might have been a very tough Senate re-election campaign in 2010.
The conventional wisdom is that in the midst of a historic financial crisis, this is the time for both parties to come together and work toward recovery. Gregg himself closed his acceptance statement on Tuesday standing alongside the president and Vice President Joseph Biden in rah-rah fashion. "Let's go out there and get this country moving!" Gregg said.
He also took the opportunity to compliment President Obama on what he called his "bold and aggressive, effective and comprehensive plan for how we can get this country moving." According to Gregg: "This is not a time for partisanship. This is not a time when we should stand in our ideological corners and shout at each other. This a time to govern, and govern well."
Because of that, he said, when the president asked him to join his administration, he believed his "obligation was to say yes."
That's quite a contrast from the days of last year's campaign, when Gregg was calling the Democratic candidate's economic plan the "Obama Spend-o-Rama."
Apparently, New Hampshire's Democratic Gov. John Lynch, under an agreement to name a Republican as Gregg's successor, will appoint Gregg's former chief of staff, Bonnie Newman, who served in the Commerce Department of the Reagan administration. That allays fears of the Democrats possibly gaining a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the U.S. Senate.
But is this about "governing well" or doing well? It certainly didn't hurt Gregg's fellow New England GOP senator, William Cohen, when he left the Senate to become Bill Clinton's secretary of defense.
It's quite doubtful that Cohen, as just a little-known moderate Republican senator, could have established a consulting firm as lucrative as the Cohen Group has become, with its strategic alliance with the monster international law firm of DLA Piper.
The Cohen Group's coups include securing a U.S. taxpayer-financed $3.6 billion contract for Lockheed to supply F-16s to Poland (touted on the Cohen Group's Web site, but with no mention of either Lockheed, Poland or American taxpayers).
Similar riches no doubt await the soon-to-be former Sen. Gregg in the years to come. But what of the coming years for our nation's economy, and the role of Gregg's party in protecting it from federal government encroachment?
A media pundit like the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne suggests that President Obama appointing Republicans to Commerce and Transportation, and keeping on Gates at Defense, merits comparisons to FDR, who made wartime appointments of Republicans Henry Stimson as secretary of war and Frank Knox as secretary of the navy. But does the president's $885 billion stimulus bill rank with mobilizing to save the world from Hitler?
As Senate Republicans now try to revamp that package significantly more toward tax-cutting, Gregg has delivered a big blow against those praiseworthy efforts. He has, in effect, announced to the world that his Republican colleagues' attempt to prevent an unpre-cedented spending spree is just an attack on the "bold and aggressive, effective and comprehensive" Obama plan, launched from his party's "ideological corner."
A few years down the road, we'll see who made out better from this Republican's decision to "say yes" to President Obama — America or Judd Gregg.
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