Romney Resisting Reform

Governor Romney’s exchange with Lawrence Kudlow in which the governor resisted talk of a gold standard is an important moment in this campaign. It was aired on CNBC yeserday. It reminds us of an exchange we had some years ago with Milton Friedman. At a lunch in Hong Kong, we asked Friedman for his view on the gold standard. “The problem with the gold standard,” Friedman replied, “is that you can go off it.” So we asked him: “Isn’t there the same deficiency in the law against murder? It can be broken. How can that be a reason not to have such a law in the first place?”

It was a cheerful and friendly exchange and ended there. But it’s the same question we’d put to Mr. Romney today, after Mr. Kudlow asked him pointedly about the Gold Commission that Mr. Gingrich has declared he would establish to chart a way forward to the gold standard. Mr. Kudlow shrewdly gave Mr. Romney an opening, noting that Mr. Gingrich “hasn’t really endorsed” a gold standard. Then he asked Mr. Romney: “You looking at gold? You looking at a dollar link?”

“You know,” Mr. Romney replied, according to the transcript of the CNBC interview posted at Real Clear Politics. “I’m happy to look at a whole range of ideas on how to have greater stability in our currency and in our monetary policies. I know that in the past when we had a gold standard, the idea that somehow it was detached from or free from any interference by Congress was simply wrong because even with the gold standard someone has to decide what is the conversion rate between the gold and the dollar.”

“Hmmm,” Mr. Kudlow commented.

“And Congress,” Mr. Romney continued, “can inflate the dollar simply by changing the exchange rate, as was done in the past. So I don't think there’s any, if you will, magic bullet substitute for economic restraint, for not spending more money than you take in, for having the nation that’s the most productive in the entire world. That’s how you get wealth for the middle class is making America a more productive nation with high savings rates and a government that only spends what it takes in.”

It happens that the gold standard has among its virtues precisely that it serves as an alarm system against over-spending of the kind Mr. Romney describes. To avoid getting caught up in Milton Friedman’s dodge, which Mr. Romney is but the latest politician to use, these columns have strived to keep the focus not on economics but on the Constitution. The crisis in which our country finds itself stems from a failure to adhere to the enumerated monetary powers and disabilities of the United States Constitution.

We would not want to suggest that the proposals Mr. Gingrich has made are not important. The controversy he generates generally does not take away from the significance of his plan for a commission on gold and honest money. He has sent a confidence-building signal in saying the chairmen he would name to the commission are Lewis Lehrman and James Grant — they couldn’t be better. We would suggest that Mr. Gingrich is still going to need more than the promise of a commission.

Particularly because Congressman Ron Paul is so far ahead of the Republican pack. Whatever doubts one has about him, he has stood on principle on money. While Mr. Romney resists and Mr. Gingrich plans his commission, Dr. Paul is moving way beyond a Gold Commission. He already has before the Congress one of the most visionary pieces of legislation of our time, the Free Competition in Currency Act. The measure, called H.R. 1098, is drawn from the seminal work of Friedrich Hayek, another Nobel laureate.

Hayek concluded toward the end of his career that the best course was to denationalize currency. Dr. Paul’s bill would end the legal tender laws and legalize the private issuance of money. The congressman is not the only legislator who gets the issue. Senator Mike Lee of Utah and James DeMint of South Carolina get it, as does Senator Rand Paul, to name but three. The danger for Messrs. Romney and Gingrich is that if either one of them becomes president they are going to find that themselves playing a catch-up game among the savviest Republicans on Capitol Hill.