The Orbis

Issue date: 3/27/07 Section: News/Features

Media Credit: Aimee Casey

Last week CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, possible 2008 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and visiting Vanderbilt Professor Harold Ford Jr. spoke at the IMPACT Symposium. Though the speakers attracted interest with their high-profile, celebrity statuses, the content of their speeches left much to be desired.

This year's IMPACT speakers were lackluster not in their credentials or experience, but rather in their words. The speeches were broad in focus, and the content was too watered down to provoke or inspire anything beyond a generic call to political involvement. Not coincidentally, this was the first time since the Symposium began in 1964 that the IMPACT Committee did not assign the speakers a current topic to discuss. Instead, the speakers could talk about the topics of their choice which addressed the vague theme for the series, "The Political Landscape."

Dobbs argued that many of America's problems today could be solved with less partisanship as well as with more individuals accepting responsibility for the failings of the current system and for creating change in the future. He called Democrats and Republicans "opposite wings of the same bird" and blamed their inability to cooperate for many of America's failures. "Common sense, basic decency, intelligence and some understanding of history suggest that you work together," Dobbs said.

Harold Ford Jr. motivated the audience to stop merely applauding America's greatness without taking the necessary steps to adapt to change and solve problems. "This moment is our moment and how we choose to respond (to today's challenges) will determine not only our future but whether or not another generation and the generation after that will enjoy the kind of fruits and benefits and opportunities that we have enjoyed for so long."

Gingrich contrasted an America that is facing more changes and challenges than ever before with a government that runs on what he called "fossilized bureaucracy." He said, "All I want to do tonight is to say to you that we are facing terrific challenges, we have enormous opportunities, and if we get our act together there is every reason to believe the next 30 years will be among the most amazing in American history."

The problem with all this is few would disagree with any of those positions.

Among the speakers, Gingrich gave by far the most specific and the most original perspective on the changes that must come to America's political landscape. He recommended looking to the private sector as a model for making government more efficient and more effective. Though this suggestion is by no means a new stance for anti-government conservatives, he did describe his own suggestions for improving some of these systems. He mentioned a proposal in which government would pay underprivileged and underperforming students for earning good grades. Gingrich also suggested that instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a project to reach Mars, NASA offer $20 billion to the first people who can create land on Mars themselves.

Continued...

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