The American Spectator

Probably the most substantive exchange of the Presidential campaign took place within the past two weeks. But it wasn’t between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, or between John McCain and either of those two. It was between Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich.

p>In an address in Philadelphia on March 18, just across from Independence Hall, Obama said, br> /p>

By investing in our schools and our communities…at this moment in this election, we can come together and say [to those who would distract us from real issues], Not this time. This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn, that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids; they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a twenty first century economy. Not this time.

br> Gingrich interpreted these words, and the rest of the speech, as calling for a real dialogue, not a political debate, about what real change would seriously address these and similar problems throughout modern American society. So that is what he offered in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on March 28. p>Gingrich began effectively saying to Obama, I know exactly what you mean, quoting Lincoln: br> /p>

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

br> But then Gingrich put his finger on the real problem with Obama’s thinking, saying, “We talk about change, and then we do more of what we are already doing.” Throughout this campaign, and his entire political career, Obama has never, and will never, say or do anything to challenge any of the verities of the Left. In the end, his supposed change always seems to hearken back to the tried and failed, Big Government policies of the 1960s, or even the 1930s. p>Gingrich pointed out the disastrous failure of these policies with the example of Detroit, where the Left has been in total control for half a century now: br> /p>

Detroit in 1950 had 1,800,000. Last year, it dropped below 900,000…It dropped from being the number one per capita income city in the United States to ranking number sixty-second…[I]n the past three years, Detroit had three times the outmigration rate of any other city in the United States.