Bradley in DC
11-04-2009, 04:50 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/magazine/08Armey-t.html?hp
Armey calls himself a free-market Republican, and enthusiasm for him was always strongest in the party’s libertarian-leaning branch, among what are sometimes called Goldwater Republicans. He is seen by some today as doing the bidding of his party, but he suspects that many who attend his rallies voted for the independent presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1992 and the Republican iconoclast Ron Paul in the 2008 primaries. . . .
Armey’s resurgence has occurred not because the Republican establishment loves him but rather because the debate has moved back to what he considers his turf. After high school, he worked a year for the local electric utility, stringing wire, then earned an undergraduate degree at Jamestown College, about 120 miles due south of Cando, and a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Oklahoma. He spent the first part of his working life as a professor, rising to chairman of the economics department at North Texas State University. “I’m an economist and, I don’t mind telling you, a damn good one,” he told me over breakfast. He added, “President Obama is a talented person who showed up at exactly the right time, but I don’t believe the man has ever been exposed to a serious economic idea, and I’m not sure anyone around him ever has, either.”
I pointed out that Obama’s circle of advisers includes some decorated economists, including Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard — a controversial figure but not one generally regarded as an intellectual slacker. “I don’t consider Larry Summers a serious economist,” Armey said. “You can get a Ph.D. from Harvard without ever having seriously considered the subject.”
IV.
When he speaks in public, Armey does not use notes and can be discursive, veering into asides that sometimes befuddle his audiences, like when he drops the names of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and his other favorite economists as if they were the well-known head coaches of local college basketball teams. “I’ve also read everything that Galbraith ever wrote, so I have the equivalent of a minor in sociology,” he quipped to a crowd in a banquet hall in Clemmons, N.C., one stop on his tour. When no one laughed, he shrugged and added, “I thought it was funnier than that.”
What makes Armey an effective advocate is how he uses his status as a learned professor and a plain-spoken man to deliver the message his audiences want to believe: that various Democratic initiatives are not just wrongheaded policy but also flagrant violations of the Constitution and affronts to traditional American values. In his telling, the Constitution is elevated to something like a sacred religious text, written by Christian believers, possibly divinely inspired and intended to be read in the most literal way. It contains solutions to any civic problem faced by modern Americans, including those brought about by the tangled health care system. To Armey, the Constitution is not a “living document” — a phrase he mocks at rallies, to laughs and great applause — and is in fact so straightforward and speaks so directly to this era that it’s reasonable to wonder why we need the nine justices of the Supreme Court to interpret it. . .
Armey calls himself a free-market Republican, and enthusiasm for him was always strongest in the party’s libertarian-leaning branch, among what are sometimes called Goldwater Republicans. He is seen by some today as doing the bidding of his party, but he suspects that many who attend his rallies voted for the independent presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1992 and the Republican iconoclast Ron Paul in the 2008 primaries. . . .
Armey’s resurgence has occurred not because the Republican establishment loves him but rather because the debate has moved back to what he considers his turf. After high school, he worked a year for the local electric utility, stringing wire, then earned an undergraduate degree at Jamestown College, about 120 miles due south of Cando, and a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Oklahoma. He spent the first part of his working life as a professor, rising to chairman of the economics department at North Texas State University. “I’m an economist and, I don’t mind telling you, a damn good one,” he told me over breakfast. He added, “President Obama is a talented person who showed up at exactly the right time, but I don’t believe the man has ever been exposed to a serious economic idea, and I’m not sure anyone around him ever has, either.”
I pointed out that Obama’s circle of advisers includes some decorated economists, including Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard — a controversial figure but not one generally regarded as an intellectual slacker. “I don’t consider Larry Summers a serious economist,” Armey said. “You can get a Ph.D. from Harvard without ever having seriously considered the subject.”
IV.
When he speaks in public, Armey does not use notes and can be discursive, veering into asides that sometimes befuddle his audiences, like when he drops the names of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and his other favorite economists as if they were the well-known head coaches of local college basketball teams. “I’ve also read everything that Galbraith ever wrote, so I have the equivalent of a minor in sociology,” he quipped to a crowd in a banquet hall in Clemmons, N.C., one stop on his tour. When no one laughed, he shrugged and added, “I thought it was funnier than that.”
What makes Armey an effective advocate is how he uses his status as a learned professor and a plain-spoken man to deliver the message his audiences want to believe: that various Democratic initiatives are not just wrongheaded policy but also flagrant violations of the Constitution and affronts to traditional American values. In his telling, the Constitution is elevated to something like a sacred religious text, written by Christian believers, possibly divinely inspired and intended to be read in the most literal way. It contains solutions to any civic problem faced by modern Americans, including those brought about by the tangled health care system. To Armey, the Constitution is not a “living document” — a phrase he mocks at rallies, to laughs and great applause — and is in fact so straightforward and speaks so directly to this era that it’s reasonable to wonder why we need the nine justices of the Supreme Court to interpret it. . .