It was an exciting evening at the University of Pennsylvania Tuesday, when former Speaker of the House and Time magazine Person of the Year Newt Gingrich appeared to talk to the student body about issues pertaining to the future of the United States.  Rather than a politically-minded dirge, however, Gingrich pounded out a pep talk in which he outlined a future of private enterprise and greater public involvement.

One of Mr. Gingrich’s chief points during the lecture was that of free enterprise, in that he believes the current government model of minimal-risk bureaucracy is not enough to keep the United States competitive in the global innovation marketplace.  He called out President Obama’s State of the Union Address promise of billions to the Department of Energy for the creation of wind energy solutions as one example of this, saying that instead of “handing money to 40-hour-a-week bureaucrats who have never created a job in their life,” the money should instead be placed in the hands of those experienced in venture capital, who “aren’t afraid to work twenty extra hours a week” in order to see success in their investments.

That is not the only time the private sector appeared in Mr. Gingrich’s rhetoric, however.  He also pointed out severely outmoded FDA regulations as the cause of a disconnect between “laboratory and treatment” as far as new medical discoveries were concerned.  He used the example of tissue engineering, where a scientist at Harvard had cultivated new bladders for seven children born with a life-threatening bladder disease.  As a result of receiving the new bladders, the children all lived.  But when the scientist attempted to move his practice from academia into the commercial sector (so as to more efficiently offer this unique service to others who were afflicted) he became ensnared in an entirely different branch of the FDA than the one he was accustomed to dealing with, resulting in years of new studies just to prove the treatment was effective, when it unquestionably was, due to the results gained from the seven children.  Apparently the commercial FDA doesn’t count results from children.  Mr. Gingrich used this example to demonstrate how instead of forcing the commercial sector to mold itself around these ridiculous regulations of bureaucracy, the bureaucracy should instead be fashioned in order to minimize the amount of time products sit awaiting approval, a statement on efficiency that few can argue with.

Mr. Gingrich also hammered home the point of public involvement.  He said that, “If you want to decentralize the government in Washington, you had better have some local government to pick up the slack.”  He asserted that local government might be able to fix local issues better than a bumbling centralized bureaucracy.  While this sentiment is interestingly reflective of the Mir system utilized by czarist Russia after the Crimean War it is not to say Mr. Gingrich advocates a slow advance towards Communism, rather, that his standard conservative stance includes a reduction in the federal government, and he recognizes that the duties of the feds would need to be picked up by some other governmental body.

The session closed with a rousing round of Q&A, kicked off by, no joke, Penn Democrats President Isabel Friedman.  Rather than discuss, well, any of what Mr. Gingrich put on the table during his lecture, Isabel instead went straight on the offensive, basically calling poor Newt a hypocritical adulterer.  The full exchange ended basically in a draw, but the fact that the leader of the Democrats at such a prestigious school of political science as Penn had to basically resort to name-calling is a sad mark against American society.  Well, that and the fact that she was outside after the session concluded, handing out leaflets advertising a similar lecture by former Governor Ed Rendell that would take place the following night.

Newt Gingrich may have stuck close to his professed conservative ideals, but by conjuring up new ways of thinking about his methods, it’s not hard to imagine that he swayed a few minds at the predominantly liberal University of Pennsylvania.