COMMENTARY | Sometimes being "grandiose" can become a bit of a problem. Take, for instance, Newt Gingrich's comments about establishing a moon base during his presidency. As reported by CBS News, although there have been plans for moon outposts made in the past, the former Speaker's moon shot became a topic at the CNN debate in Florida Thursday evening and might have hit his campaign in the foot just as the Florida Primary looms.
"By the end of my second term," Gingrich told a receptive Florida gathering earlier in the day, "we will have the first permanent base on the moon and it will be American."
Speaking to an audience along the Space Coast (in a state with deep aerospace connections), Gingrich said he was "sick of being told we have to be limited to technologies that are 50-years old."
But his GOP rival, Mitt Romney, took him to task over his statements, which Romney characterized as pandering to locals voters. "If I had a business executive come to me and say I want to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, 'You're fired,'" Romney said.
Romney then ticked off promises Gingrich had made in the states where there had already been caucuses and debates, like a new VA hospital in northern New Hampshire. He said that it was promises such as those that put America in the deficit bind that she currently found herself in.
Gingrich attempted to regroup and rejoin. " You don't just have to be cheap everywhere," Gingrich said. "You can actually have priorities to get things done."
And the former Speaker is absolutely correct. There is no reason to be "cheap everywhere." However, in a sluggish economy, which, if elected president, he would inherit, the pursuance and establishment of a moon base would be of the lowest priority. It would be a program that would be seen as superfluous and unnecessary in a time when economic hardship has been visited upon at least one-sixth of the American population. And where jobs -- availability and the lack thereof -- have become the number one economic topic, promoting a program that would only see a few thousand jobs produced at the expense of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars would appear insensitive to the needs of the public. Then to establish a moon base in eight years, when NASA's manned space flight program has been put on an indefinite hiatus? Although not impossible, it stretches the limits of credulity in such economically fragile times.
Newt Gingrich's penchant for the grandiose -- he claimed at the CNN Southern Republican Presidential Debate in Charleston, S. C., that America was a grandiose country of grandiose ideas that needed grandiose leadership -- could effectively shoot down his candidacy. This is where Romney's assertions and business acumen trump Gingrich's dreams of national (and lunar) grandeur. When taxpayer money is allocated to certain programs through the budget, it becomes law and must be spent in that manner (or rescinded with more legislation). Such proposals and actual expenditures in a down or sluggish economy could be seen as insensitivity to the populace at large, especially one experiencing record long-term unemployment issues.
Along with attacks from his own party as being undisciplined and running a chaotic House when he was Speaker (attacks which his moon base comments seem to corroborate), such grandiose statements about near-future moon bases could be detrimental to Gingrich's campaign.
But just putting a base on the moon wasn't the end of it. Gingrich elaborated, making matters worse. He sees the base as a potential 51st state. He said that once the base reached 13,000 in population it could and should be considered for statehood.
Apparently the former Speaker has not considered the vast expenditures it would require in both taxpayer and privatized investiture to build, maintain, and provide sustainability for such a moon base, not to mention one that would eventually house 13,000 inhabitants.
Meanwhile, back on Earth...
Of course, Gingrich's position is an argument against allowing the Chinese to get to the moon and establish a base first, which gives rise to fears of a Chinese military and strategic advantage in space. The Chinese announced in 2006 (via Reuters) that their space program would put a man on the moon by 2024.
Gingrich's moon base, if it went according to plan (which it would not because, being realistic, this would be a government program full of the usual delays and cost overruns), would be operational by 2020.
Gingrich simply overshot his audience. A big idea, and not even a bad one, but delivered at what might be considered an inopportune time. Surveys indicate that the main concern of Americans is the economy and jobs. By giving his Florida and national audience (via the televised debate) his designs on the moon, he also shot himself in the political foot. He gave Romney some much needed ammunition in the latest debate to perhaps win the Florida Primary or at least slow the momentum Gingrich seemed to acquire in South Carolina. Unfortunately for his campaign, Gingrich made the beleaguered Romney look the pragmatist and the sensible candidate.
Still, Newt Gingrich looked every bit of grandiose...
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