“Why Are So Many of Our Political Leaders So Timid?” was the topic discussed by guest speaker Bob Barr at the Madison Forum luncheon on Dec. 31, 2022 at the “Semper FI Bar & Grille in Woodstock, GA.
Barr currently serves as Chairman for Liberty Guard, an organization with a core mission to Protect and Defend Individual Liberty. Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, serving as a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, as Vice-Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, and as an eight-year veteran of the Committee on Financial Services. In 2008, he was the Libertarian Party nominee for President. He practices law in Atlanta, Georgia, and is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Rifle Association.
TRANSCRIPTION
[00:00]
Madison Forum Whirlwind Session. See video above.
I really do enjoy coming here not only to see so many friends and meet new ones, but also just to listen to the, what do you call the whirlwind discussion, or whatever. And what I’ll be talking a little bit about today in our discussion about the timidity of political leaders in today’s world; and Mike talked about it, as many of us do, the people, the society, and so forth, are not doing those things, they need to be doing. I don’t include in that group, The Madison Forum. You know what’s going on, you know the Constitution, you know the problems we face, but the vast majority, unfortunately, of our citizens, regardless of their political ability, don’t. And that’s really a serious problem. But, what we think about is, as Michael asked me to talk a little bit about the leadership, the lack thereof, the timidity of so many of our political leaders today, my thoughts turn to the fact that we have a tendency to speak about and to determine leaders, and whether they are strong or not, in a vacuum.
[29:49]
We look at a particular individual, well do they have the attitudes of a leader? We could all come up with a good list, I have nine of them, and to be a good leader you have to have at least six out of nine to resolve, vision, consistency, character and ethics, intelligence, debate skills, tolerance, willing to delegate, and to prioritize. To prioritize does not mean to compromise one’s belief, but it does mean that if you have your priorities set right, you know that in order to accomplish your highest and your higher priorities, sometimes you have to give way on some of your lower ones. That’s very, very important part of actually getting things done. But looking at whether or not individuals in the political arena are leaders or not, sort of removes us from the fact that we are responsible for that.
[30:49]
We are responsible for the lack of strong, untimid, courageous leaders in our political system. It’s all part of the same environment. You have to look at the leaders themselves. You have to look at the society from which they come. The society today here in America.
[31:13]
Do we really, despite talking about wanting great, strong leaders, do we really? Does society in America, Western society, do we really want strong leaders? And you also need to look at how those individuals fit into the particular group, whether it’s Congress, or the State House, or local government. They have to look at all three of those as one, a group from which the leaders that we’re evaluating come from and are a part of, the society generally, and the actual individuals themselves. And looking at that, of course the most problematic part is the society itself. Do we really, as a society, not the Madison Forum, do or does our society here in the United States, in the UK, and other Western countries, do we really value strong leaders? Has leadership become, as a former prime minister in Canada, once said years ago, back in the 1980s I believe it was, that leadership is making people feel happy, making them feel good about themselves. And even though he said that back in the 1980s, it has a degree of currency today. People, when they prefer to feel good about
what’s going on, they want to be made to feel good, rather than doing the hard work and very uncomfortable work of standing up and demanding strong leadership, it’s not easy, it’s hard. And one of those things that I noticed when I had the honor of serving in the Congress back in the 1990s and a couple years into the 2000s, was that even within the Republican Party then, the lack of strong leaders, and I noticed one thing very interesting back during the great government shutdown of 1995 and 1996, the first year in which we had that Republican majority for the first time in 40 years, that we had an opportunity to define and present to the president, Bill Clinton at the time, the budget the appropriations bill.
[33:46]
There are 13 different appropriations bills. We all know here that very rarely in decades has Congress worked its way through, according to their rules and according to the budget law of 1974, worked their way through so that they passed all of those 13 appropriations bills which fund all of the offices of the federal government, including the judiciary, the Congress, the White House, and all those federal agencies, by the end of the fiscal year, September 30th each year. Congress just doesn’t do its job. One of the issues that came to mind is, well, Congress is supposed to do certain things that are prohibited to the Congress. How do you rectify that? Well, Congress has to, but if Congress decides to not follow the law, not follow its own rules, then there’s very limited opportunities through the judiciary for example, for us as taxpayers, as citizens, to bring a serious challenge to that one.
[34:55]
It’s expensive, it takes a great deal of time, and most importantly is that roadblock the federal courts constantly place in the way of citizen access to the court to rectify public wrong that is standing, that great issue of standing. Even though we are forced to fund the government, even though we pay for the government, even though we elect representatives to the government, we cannot, an average citizen cannot just file a lawsuit in federal court while Congress is not doing its job. The court doesn’t allow that kind of an issue that you really don’t have standing. Very difficult. Congress, in fact, can bring a challenge to what the president does. The use of executive orders, for example, and those have been sustained a mere two times over the course of modern history. The challenge is, once again, President Truman, when he tried to act on the steel industry, I’d just say that the start of the brave work, once again, President Clinton, when he tried to get the court a worker replacement executive order, only two times. That was an elusive line that the courts said, yes, Congress can, in fact, state as standing challenge. So it’s very difficult, and Congress doesn’t want to abide by its own rules. They simply don’t. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, a few years ago, decided that despite what the Constitution says, despite what Jefferson’s rules say, they would have a proxy voting. Hopefully, that will be the first issue that the new Republican majority, if they never decide on who’s going to be the leader, will rectify on January 3rd, next week, because it has to do with the very conduct of every order of business in the House. But when you look at leaders, are they consistent? Do they know how to delegate?
[37:04]
Do they know that, for example, one of the things that I noticed when Newt was the Speaker, on any one particular day, we would have a caucus meeting, for example, on a key issue that was coming up, and Newt would provide a tremendous vision, where do we need to go with this legislation? Why is this legislation important? Then, a couple days later, we’d have a meeting, and we’d be in the weeds, talking about specifically what this individual needs, and what we need to do with this or that. It isn’t the job of a leader to get in the weeds. It is the job of a leader to provide the vision, identify the goals, priorities, and be able to delegate those issues. I hate to bring you the bearing of bad news, but probably one of the strongest leaders in Washington who is not timid is Chuck Schumer. You know, you look at what Chuck Schumer has done.
[38:05]
He is strong, he is consistent, he is ruthless, and he prioritizes and he gets things done for his party. One of the leaders that I really admired when I had the opportunity to serve in the Congress, some of you may remember a Texan named Tom DeLay. Tom DeLay was the majority whip, the third position in the majority party, you have a speaker, and then a majority leader to make sure that things get done among the majority party, and then you have the majority whip, who actually counts the votes and makes sure that things get done. Tom DeLay was a tremendous leader. He was accessible, he was consistent, he understood the priorities, and you could always go to him, and he would tell you exactly what the situation was. Broadly speaking though, I don’t think the Republican Party could even have Tom DeLay, elected Tom DeLay nowadays. Why? Because he was tough as nails, and he didn’t mince words. He didn’t go back home to his district and talk about bringing home the bacon and doing all these favors.
[39:18]
He stood for the principles of, then, the Republican Party, and we actually accomplished a balanced budget to reform welfare. In fact, that one window that we had when we actually got things done before our leadership, Newt, sort of fell apart with a personal scandal.
[39:42]
That 1996-97 window that set the stage for the balanced budget, and it was during that so-called government shutdown back in 1995 that we kind of set the stage for that. But back then, the same that happened with the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, this last week I guess it was, let me take a wild guess, was it the Republicans who blinked or the Democrats? It was the Republicans that blinked. When push comes to shove, the modern Republican Party blinks. Democrats don’t. They play a hardball, and they do it consistently.
[40:29]
We talked about the fact that during the comment session here, you don’t get into debates, but debating is an important and vital function of accomplishing anything in the political arena. When was the last time we had a real debate at the congressional level? Remember the Congress don’t even have town hall meetings anymore. They’re afraid. When was the last time we had a real presidential candidate? It’s been decades debating, and the willingness to have a civil debate, a civil debate, a knowledgeable debate, is absolutely essential to accomplishing your goals. That’s how you hone the issues. That’s how you focus on the issues. That’s how you convince both yourself and others of your positions. I always enjoy watching. They don’t have it as frequently, I don’t think, on C-SPAN as they used to, the Prime Minister’s questions in the House of Commons, where the Prime Minister debates the individuals on the other side of the aisle. Granted, he or she is well prepared, and they’ve got their books of issues, but a lot of it is extemporaneous. They value debate. That’s one thing that reflects the House of Commons or the Parliament. It’s really something that I wish we would have more of here. Instead, what we have here, I don’t want us to go to a parliamentary system. I don’t think that suits our needs. If we had the system, the implication of people in the arena, our system would work a lot better than it does.
[42:25]
But, if you follow, if you watch the action on the floor of the House, or if you have the bloviating on the floor of the Senate, or the committee work in the House or the subcommittees, unfortunately, each member with their, on the House side, their five minutes to go through. Everybody has five minutes, ultimately, on the Republican and Democrat side and so forth. And then if you have time, you have another round. But there is very, very rarely, any discipline or coordination on the Republican side. So each member has their five minutes to simply say what they want to say that they hope will get reported back in their home district so that it will improve their political standing, as opposed to coordinating within your party, within your members on the subcommittee or the committee staff, to say, okay, these are our priorities, these are things that we have to accomplish with this hearing and have the responsibility split among the different members. That’s how you actually accomplish something. You hold the witness’ feet to the fire and what you also do when you’re in the majority, and I don’t know if the Republicans will do this in conducting proper oversight in the coming session of Congress. What are we, 118th or 117th?
[43:53]
I should know, it’s either the 117th, I think it’s the 117th, but what you want to do is you don’t allow your witnesses, if you have a witness like, you know, this character Mayorkas who says over and over again that the border is so secure. When he comes up there, whether it’s Republican or Democrat, if he’s up there as a witness, he knows that all he has to do is sit there for a half a day, which is usually all they can get these top-level people to agree to, sit there for half a day, answer softball questions from his party’s side, put up with the insults from the other party’s side, and then go back and forget about it because nobody ever follows up with anything. You think they’ll send a letter or two, but nobody will follow up with them. What you have to do, you have the oversight power as the majority. It’s the most unused, the most powerful power and the responsibility that the House has is that oversight power. And what you do is you get these people, you subpoena them if you have to. Your leadership has to support those subpoenas.
[45:08]
That’s part of being a leader, supporting your committees and subcommittees when they want to subpoena somebody and hold them in contempt if they have to. But get that into them, whether it’s Mayorkas or Garland or whoever, get them back there over and over and over again. Don’t let them slide off by just coming up one time and then going back to their bureaucracy and forgetting about it. That’s part of leadership, knowing the procedure and sticking to the procedure and making sure that things get done. It’s a complex set of issues, but it starts here with us demanding leaders, not just being happy to have somebody up in the Congress and the House and the Senate to do stuff for the district. That’s fine. It has nothing to do with leadership. That simply has to do with properly representing your constituents. Being a leader is more than simply representing your constituents. It’s adhering to the Constitution. It’s setting those priorities, it’s understanding how to accomplish those priorities in the process, you’re not compromising your principles at all, understanding that some things are more important than others in the Constitution. Michael constantly talks about this. We at the Madison Forum understand those are important. So with that, Michael, we open it up for broader discussion.
[46:42]
Q&A Session. See video above.
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