Rick Santorum Understands the Essence of Politics and Political Leadership Better than the Rest

In America, Republicans have begun to choose their presidential candidate. A columnist for the Kommersant FM paper, Constantin Eggert, thought about which candidate would get his vote, if he lived in the United States and participated in the primaries.

Prior to the start of the primary season, the Republican Party’s candidate list looked bleak. Former governor of Massachusetts and businessman Mitt Romney is soft in his beliefs and doesn’t have experience in foreign policy, to say the least. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is an intellectual and possibly the most impressive of the candidates. But Gingrich is much too aggressive and impatient, and on his fourth wife to boot. Even in non-puritan Russia, this would probably be a bust for the president. Governor of Texas Rick Perry is a bit inelegant and careless with his tongue.

The majority of American analysts will argue that Barack Obama is saved for now precisely because of the lack of good Republican candidates. Even in the Republican Party, everyone is convinced that Obama would beat today’s favorite, Romney. But the biggest surprise in Republican polls in Iowa was the strong showing of a man who was considered an outsider until the last minute: former Senator Rick Santorum. If I were an American, and moreover an active Republican, I would vote for him.

A couple of years ago I signed up for news updates on his website — and to this day I haven’t regretted it. I am impressed by the young senator’s conservative views on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. In addition, he is a political and economic liberal but far from the Social Darwinism that is associated with right-wing views. Santorum has also shown that he has a grip on foreign policy better than almost all the other candidates — and on par with the clever Gingrich.

Rick Santorum is a practicing Catholic, the father of six children. Catholics in the U.S. traditionally vote for Democrats. The one Catholic president in U.S. history, John Kennedy, was a Democrat. Only in the past decade, with the presidency of George W. Bush, has there been a tendency for Catholic voters to align themselves with the Republican camp. Also, a president with strong moral and leadership qualities is more important for Americans than ever before.

Obama, who paradoxically combines leftist dogmatism and political opportunism at its highest level, basically wasted this high moral capital, which he had before getting elected. I really liked this one phrase Santorum used during one of the Republican debates. Answering Mitt Romney’s statement that his private sector experience would mesh well in the White House, Santorum said: “[B]usiness experience doesn’t necessarily match up with being the commander in chief.” For me, this is the best characteristic of policy and politics.

Entrepreneurship: a civilized expression of one of the basic human instincts — namely greed. Politics: a cultivated embodiment of another basic instinct — thirst for power. For precisely this reason, among the “captains” of big business, there are generally few political leaders, especially prominent ones.

Maybe Rick Santorum won’t become the Republican candidate. And if he does, maybe he will lose against Obama. But he understands the essence of politics and political