I DON'T YET GET MIKE LEE
I'm not sure about Mike Lee.
Everybody else is on board, but I'm still sitting here waiting to get the warm fuzzy that tells me he's the guy. I'm not saying I'm against him, but I can't honestly say I'm for him yet, either.
What am I talking about? The race to replace Bob Bennett. Not that Bob Bennett wants to be replaced. After three terms as a United States senator from Utah, there are some within the Republican Party who would like to see Bob Bennett sent into retirement. Sure, Bob Bennett is a Republican himself -- but not so that it shows.
And at 76, with a long list of liberal accomplishments, real Republicans are just flatout tired of him.
So for more than a year there has been a game playing out to see who would, at the Republican convention, challenge him. At first it was going to be Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. Then I hoped it would be Congressman Jason Chaffetz. Along the way two or three no-names got in. One millionaire was in for about a week until, whammo, a big government contract for his company took his mind off politics.
All through that process, in the background, behind closed doors, was the building campaign of Mike Lee.
And he has won over some people I admire and respect, and whose opinions I respect. Mark Shurtleff, who withdrew himself for family reasons, endorses Mike Lee. The soldier's wife who ran Jason Chaffetz' masterful campaign is also running Mike Lee's campaign. An anonymous lady with no political background has knocked off a congressman and may be about to knock off a senator. I think that Jason Chaffetz himself will endorse Mike Lee, perhaps as soon as today. Even good, conservative members of the state Legislature -- like Rep. Carl Wimmer -- have embraced Mike Lee.
Which means he's probably a great guy, and I'll probably end up endorsing him. But I'm not there yet, and recent days haven't helped much.
I'll explain why in a minute, but first, a little bit about Mike Lee.
He's famous in Utah because of his dad. His father was Rex E. Lee, a president of Brigham Young University and Ronald Reagan's solicitor general. Mike Lee is also an attorney, having clerked on the Supreme Court for Sam Alito and serving as the general counsel to Utah's former governor. He subsequently turned around and, on behalf of a client, sued the state of Utah seeking to overturn a policy which, as a state employee, he had defended. It seems that, relative to this specific matter, his position for or against putting foreign nuclear waste in Utah depends on who's writing him a check.
I've only spoken to Mike Lee twice. There were overtures from his campaign to me over the last many months to meet privately and talk, but I wanted conversations on the air, in front of an audience, so that listeners could take the measure of the man at the same time I did. So, after two conversations, and following him in the press, the jury is still out.
Again, better and wiser people than I adore him. And their judgement is probably good. But I'm not yet a convert. I have a couple of reservations.
Like day before yesterday, when he stood up at the State Capitol and said he was a candidate. He said that he was a Constitution guy, that he wanted to go to Washington and fight for the Constitution, to remind the Senate that it is supposed to follow that sacred document. Then he called for two amendments to the Constitution.
Which sounds an awful lot like: The Constitution is sacred, but we need to change it. Its Framers were inspired, but not inspired enough.
Specifically, he said that it needs to be amended to impose term limits on Congress and mandate a balanced budget.
Now, those are very popular subjects with conservative people -- whose support he needs if he's going to knock off Bob Bennett at the Republican convention. But those are also stands which the Founding Fathers wisely rejected. The Founding Fathers didn't see a need for either of those things in the Constitution, and I trust their judgment over Mike Lee's.
Don't get me wrong. We need a balanced budget. More than anything, we need a balanced budget. But Alexander Hamilton -- George Washington's alter ego -- would have had a heart attack at the notion that the country should constitutionally forbid itself debt. It was debt, after all, that let us win the Revolutionary War and free three continents during the Second World War. Abraham Lincoln, with his fondness for "internal improvements," would have seen the advisability of occasional and reasonable federal debt for non-war purposes.
We should live within our means, and Congress can pass laws and budgets to that effect. But amending the Constitution to that end is foolish, particularly to someone with a background in the Constitution. It sounded to me like affected populism.
As did the call for term limits.
Yes, people serve way too long in Congress. Yes, we have a professional political class right now. But the insinuation that the era of the Founders was much different doesn't stand up to the test of history. Several of the Founders themselves held elected office for years on end. Some for the majority of their lives, and our Republic was benefited by their service.
And any person with Mike Lee's knowledge of the Constitution must understand that an amendment mandating term limits would go against both the letter and the spirit of what the Founders wanted. Term limits don't limit the freedom of politicians, they limit the freedom of the voters. We don't need term limits, we have elections. And if Mike Lee, or someone else, can pose a viable alternative to Bob Bennett, and convince voters of that fact, the Constitution's existing system for replacing politicians will work perfectly.
It is hard to improve on 200 years of wisdom, and these suggestions from Mike Lee fall short. They might get populist conservative votes, but they're bad policy and they disrespect the Constitution and its Framers.
When I first interviewed Mike Lee, I asked him about a couple of specific issues, and their propriety under the Constitution. In his responses, he didn't really answer. Rather, he cited cases and gave a lawyerly non-specific response. There's a place for that, but a campaign for the Senate isn't that place. For example, I asked him about the Kelo case that about destroyed private property rights in the name of eminent domain. A constitutionalist or conservative could have only one response: It is wrong. But Mike Lee, instead, kind of talked around it, acknowledging that eminent domain was an issue, no doubt about it, but he didn't himself take a stand on it.
As I listened to him, he was affable and intelligent, but he kind of drifted, following tangents of logic in his mind. I thought as he spoke that he was staff, not line -- that he was the kind of person who worked for a senator, not the kind of person who was himself a senator. I thought him a scholar, not a leader.
Clearly, I could be wrong. A lot of people I trust would think so. I keep studying him, expecting to find the spark that has caught so many, and maybe I'll find it.
But at this stage, I still haven't shaken the idea that this is a fellow who, if he didn't have a famous father, we'd never have heard of. I can't help but think that Utah's astounding fondness for rewarding powerful men by giving power to their sons is what's at play here. Bob Bennett himself got the seat because his father had held it before him. The last governor got the office as a present to his father. The state's Democratic congressman got his seat on the strength of his father's name.
A seat in the United States Senate is a big deal. A very big deal. It should go to someone who has earned the public trust and demonstrated leadership ability. Mike Lee's never run for anything or held any executive or legislative post at any level of government or in the private sector. He's a complete newcomer. He talks about principles and the Constitution -- the things we should all stand for -- but I've notice in life that anybody can talk about anything and it doesn't necessarily mean anything. For example, the governor Mike Lee was general counsel for was also a great believer in conservative principles, until the election, when he jettisoned them and never looked back. The politician Mike Lee has been closest to in his life is a man who lied to Utah conservatives to get their support at the convention and then gave them the back of his hand the moment he was in office. You worry if stuff like that is catching.
I'm also bothered by Mike Lee's age. Not that a 38-year-old can't serve well in the Senate, but that he's got so much life left. True, he is saying that people shouldn't make a career of Washington, but so too did the two current Utah senators, both of whom have since made a career of Washington. Everybody running against incumbents is against long tenure in office. And everybody running for re-election believes in experience and seniority.
My concern is that at 38, Utah could be biting off something it will take 30 or 40 years to chew. I'm nervous about that.
The one selling point for 76-year-old Bob Bennett is that, at his age, he's got a built-in term limit. He's also, as they say, the devil you know.
I'm not sure what my point is, except that I'm not yet sold on Mike Lee. Maybe it will come, maybe it won't.
But my honest opinion is that, from a conservative standpoint, the best candidates would be Jason Chaffetz or Congressman Rob Bishop. Chaffetz would be an immediate national star. Bishop would be an experienced, tried-and-true, known-quantity conservative and fighter for the Constitution. Moderate Mark Shurtleff would be quite capable, as would about a half a dozen good Constitutional conservatives in the state Legislature. Why all of them get pushed aside so that Mike Lee can run, I honestly don't quite grasp. Why Mike Lee gets a seat in the United States Senate I simply don't understand.
But maybe I'm missing something.
The people supporting Mike Lee are good people, who I admire and respect. And maybe I will come around and join them.
But that has not happened yet.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2010
