Editorial
Investor's Business Daily
January 20, 2012
Leadership: A great debater. Politically polarizing. Prone to great error, but also prone to spectacular success. Steeped in history. Politically brilliant. Unorthodox. Audacious.
All these qualities were once used to describe Winston Churchill. Today, you might use the same words to describe Newt Gingrich. Sound absurd? Not when you think about it.
Churchill, like Gingrich, was a brilliant politician with a powerful sense of the occasion.
Sometimes prickly, often witty, but never dull, his career had lots of ups and downs — ranging from being blamed for the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in World War I to being credited as the father of the British welfare state — not exactly a compliment among conservatives, then or now.
Indeed, by Churchill's own admission, "The Conservatives have never liked nor trusted me." The same thing can be said of Gingrich, who has had a tortured relationship with the GOP's conservative wing, to say the least.
And yet, when his nation called on him to lead in 1940, Churchill was ready — the right man for the right time. With America's government under President Obama moving rapidly to the extreme left, Gingrich too might be the right man for the right time.
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