Our Splendid Cuss

AS if it weren’t bad enough that Jesse Helms is leaving, Phil Gramm, too, is “moving on,” to use a recently popular phrase. Thus are we right types losing our two favorite, and most stalwart, senators. Each is judged irreplaceable, indispensable, and each may be, though Gramm bristles at the suggestion: “As my grandmama used to say, ‘The grave- yard is full of indispensable men.’” Plus, the Founders set it up so that “it shouldn’t matter who’s here [in Washington].” Moreover, “Senators often say to me, ‘You said, or did, exactly what I wanted to do.’ But if I hadn’t been here, maybe they would have.”

Don’t know about that one. For about 20 years, Phil Gramm has been the conservatives’—and the libertarians’— great champion and explicator. He has been almost a one- man band in defending and explaining what is sometimes called quaintly “economic freedom.” He was about the only one in Washington who really gave a rip about property rights. In many ways, he has been the office-holding equivalent of the columnist and economist Thomas Sowell, a splendid cuss. It is almost universally acknowledged that Gramm is brainy, principled, and fearless. It is also almost universally alleged that he is not a likable, certainly not a lovable, man, and that this hampered his effort to go further: to be president.

About the Author

Jay Nordlinger

Jay Nordlinger was a senior editor of National Review and a book fellow at National Review Institute.

AS if it weren’t bad enough that Jesse Helms is leaving, Phil Gramm, too, is “moving on,” to use a recently popular phrase. Thus are we right types losing our two favorite, and most stalwart, senators. Each is judged irreplaceable, indispensable, and each may be, though Gramm bristles at the suggestion: “As my grandmama used to say, ‘The grave- yard is full of indispensable men.’” Plus, the Founders set it up so that “it shouldn’t matter who’s here [in Washington].” Moreover, “Senators often say to me, ‘You said, or did, exactly what I wanted to do.’ But if I hadn’t been here, maybe they would have.”

Don’t know about that one. For about 20 years, Phil Gramm has been the conservatives’—and the libertarians’— great champion and explicator. He has been almost a one- man band in defending and explaining what is sometimes called quaintly “economic freedom.” He was about the only one in Washington who really gave a rip about property rights. In many ways, he has been the office-holding equivalent of the columnist and economist Thomas Sowell, a splendid cuss. It is almost universally acknowledged that Gramm is brainy, principled, and fearless. It is also almost universally alleged that he is not a likable, certainly not a lovable, man, and that this hampered his effort to go further: to be president.