Room for Space?

 

For the relatively tiny number of us who yearn for a national space policy that engages the public's mind to explore space, the very mention of space in a presidential campaign is a good thing.  That space became the focus of a pointed exchange between former Speaker Gingrich and former Governor Romney in last week's Florida primary debate is a better thing.

The fact that space exploration is not talked about at all in the White House, except by the current occupant to punctuate his claim on a vastly more expansive and expensive terrestrial government, is a national shame.

I do much prefer Newt Gingrich to be the Republican nominee for President.  But it's not his most recent call for establishing an American lunar base that compels me to support him over Mitt Romney.  No election will turn on an issue that consumes less than 5/8th's of one percent of the federal budget.  But space is symbolic of national power, and the ease Mitt showed in his rejection of Newt's lunar base proposal is a troubling insight into the mind of the former Massachusetts Governor.

While pundits and comedians are enjoying the moment, saying that space is too far-out for a serious candidate for president, I have to wonder why something that inspired three generations in the 1960s and 1970s to believe in science and learn math so much so that it invented the information age and accelerated the ubiquity of the online economy and revolutionized telecommunications-- just to name a few-- could be so suddenly and easily become so taboo?

A president's first job is to see the path and lead Americans upon it to move the nation from one era to the next with our freedom and prosperity intact. If Governor Romney is as passive about space as he appears to be, comfortable treating space exploration like a political asterisk and a decimal point in the discretionary budget, he does not-- just like Barack Obama-- meet the first criteria of being president.

Leading and leadership are difficult qualities to predict.  George W. Bush, who became president practically on the flip of a coin (a close Supreme Court ruling that ended the 2000 Florida ballot recount), only became a leader when terrorists attacked the US with hijacked airplanes.  Were it not for 9-11, the political establishment's incarnation of "frontrunner" would have been a likeable one-term caretaker president, barely capable of the job.  Instead Bush instinctively understood the scale and character of the 9-11 attack and marshaled the resources of the nation to defeat a global menace once-and-for-all.  Bush's leadership in such a critical moment, faced with numerous options that included the murky "law enforcement" approach of his predecessor, was impossible to predict.

So when a political primary contest offers the rare clear window into a candidate's innate understanding of leadership, it's well worth a good look:

If candidate Romney's quip that anyone who came to him with plans for a moon base would be fired on the spot is to be taken seriously, what would President Romney do to the CIA Director who told him that a jihadist Iran armed with nuclear missiles was, in fact, planning to launch them?  Would President Romney call for a commission to examine his options, as he said was his "plan" for NASA?  Would President Romney look out beyond the crisis and weigh the economic costs of failing to respond to Iran, or stay focused on the Pentagon's cost-benefit analysis for a preemptive US first strike?

If candidate Romney doesn't think US supremacy in space is worthwhile, where on Earth does US supremacy matter to him?  Just because China has announced plans for a moon base doesn't mean either they will achieve them or that we need to worry in a practical sense that China will impose its will on the world from the moon.  But as a symbol of national power, or as an extension of its economic sphere to the furthest possible real estate, or as a means to inspire (versus force) its citizens to perform complicated high-risk work, going to the moon obviously means a great deal to China.  Just where would President Romney point the way for America to achieve cross-generational greatness or positively (without going to war) extend US influence?

Voters are not any time soon going to require their President to embrace exploring space as a central theme of their government nor for that matter cast their vote based on a candidate's budget for NASA.  But far from making himself "safe" by answering Mr. Gingrich's moon base proposal with a joke, the view it provides into the mind of would-be President Romney shows it is small-- too small to be President.