Tonight, 16-Feb-2012, I was able to speak one-on-one with Newt Gingrich during his Tele-Town Hall meeting. I was about the eighth caller out of the nine that he took questions from. Here is the gist of our conversation:
First I thanked the Speaker for the opportunity to ask questions. I told him that “he had won me over” back in 2008 when I read his book Real Change. At that time I became convinced that Newt should be the next President because of his great ideas which have been proven to work in similar circumstances.
Q: I asked “how large should the Federal government be. Not just ‘smaller’ but exactly what percentage of GDP?
Newt’s response: taking such steps as making the government more efficient through better management techniques that we could get the size of the Federal government from its present size of 24 percent of GDP (and its previous size of 18 percent of GDP before Obama took office) back down to 10 to 11 percent.
I commented that that would be inline with the Biblical tithe, which was a prescription for the size of “government” of its day. Newt agreed.
Q: I commented that when Newt has mentioned “lean six sigma” that most people don’t know what that is, and even “modern management techniques” is vague, and that he should elaborate by giving short case studies from industry as examples, to be more effective.
Newt’s response: he gave an example from the building of the 787 Dreamliner, with the goal of cutting the production line time from 16 days down to 6 days with the same staff, using modern management techniques.
Q: Finally I commented that “negative campaigning for Newt” does not work, and that after Florida I hoped that the “relentless commitment to positivity” would be a reality, more than it was during Iowa.
Newt’s response: he agreed that this lesson was driven home after Florida, and that from now on he was committed to waging a campaign of truly positive, big ideas. He commented that negative campaigning does seem to work for Romney, and I said that different approaches seem to work for different candidates.
I thanked him again for the opportunity for the conversation.