Brain Trust - Hunter Baker

Hunter Baker is an Associate Dean at Union University, and a blogger at First Things. He joined The Matt Friedeman Show for the Brain Trust segment. Here are the "CliffsNotes" of his interview.

Who is your Person of the Year?

One name came to mind immediately, and that would be Paul Ryan. He stands almost alone among our elected officials in trying to find an answer to our fiscal problem.

Why all the backlash against Newt Gingrich?

Yeah, this is quite a striking development. I'm especially taken aback by National Review's move. They are basically saying there are only three acceptable people: Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, and Rick Santorum.

I don't know if listeners know this, but National Review declined to endorse Dwight Eisenhower, saying he wasn't conservative enough. And now they are pretty close to endorsing Mitt Romney.

The backlash against Gingrich is very interesting to me. I think there are a lot of people who are Washington insiders and Conservative insiders who are saying that this is a very bad idea. Obviously they have very bad memories of 1994.

What could be the repercussions of National Review's denial of Gingrich?

This was a very risky move for them. If Gingrich goes on to win the nomination, which really could happen, what is National Review going to do?

How are they going to recant their firm denial of Gingrich? And have they given free advertising to the other side with this?

Obama apparently thinks he has had an "accomplished presidency."

I was astounded by that. That quote about healthcare, that no one is going to go bankrupt because of healthcare, I was thinking that while no individual may go bankrupt, the entire nation might.

I don't see that he has made any tough choices. I really don't see that he has made up any solutions to problems. He simply delegated decisions to Congress.

Our economy seems like it's locked in ultra-slow growth mode, so slow that you can barely see it happening.

How would you rank Obama in the lineup of our presidents?

I think that he would like to be in the line of FDR and Johnson. The presidency that he had is not the one he wanted.

He wanted to be the third person in the trinity of the welfare state, starting with Roosevelt and going on to Johnson.

We may turn around and say that it's a blessing that these have not been great economic times, because who knows what he might have done if we had had money.