Reasonable Men

The rhetoric is hot when the times call for cooler heads in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris. Men who want to be president like Donald Trump saying we should consider closing mosques. Rand Paul asking people to sign petitions to keep Syrian refugees out of the country. Ted Cruz telling college students it’s “absolute lunacy” to accept Syrians refugees. Ben Carson asking Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to pass legislation to block funding for the president’s Syrian refugee plan to allow up to ten thousand of them to enter the country in the coming year. If Republicans try to take this out of the budget plan that must pass by December 11th, we could be threatened with another government shutdown. Even more than a dozen governors are saying they would close their states to the refugees. Immigration experts have told CBS News that states do not have the power to refuse immigrants with refugee status. So they are just blowing hot air. The president responds by saying that refusing Syrian refugees is “not who we are”.

New Speaker of the House Paul Ryan says the Syrian refugee issue “requires a pause”. He says he’s putting together a task force to help come up with legislation to deal with the Obama administration’s plan to take in those ten thousand refugees next year. This is certainly a more reasoned response to an event that has shaken the global community, and made us think about going to crowded public places like stadiums, concert halls, and sidewalk cafes. Seventy five years ago, anti-semites in the United States State Department prevented thousands of Jews from immigrating here as they tried to run from almost certain death by the Nazi murder machine.

Syrians are also running from a new form of terror and death caused by the madness of ISIS. But we can’t assume every Syrian refugee is a potential terrorist. There is a need for a careful vetting process. It is a huge administrative problem, and it will take smart, creative people to make sure no one slips through the cracks. The responsibility is daunting. But the solution is not to slam the door shut and hope the problem goes away.

Paul Ryan will be an important player as we go forward to deal with not only the Syrian refugee issue, but the larger issue of immigration, keeping us safe from another terrorist attack, the budget, taxes,  and the future of Social Security and Medicare. By his own admission in a 60 Minutes interview this week, Ryan knows he’s taking over an institution that is not functioning and has to change. He said he has spoken with the president since he took the job, and said they have areas they can agree on and get things done. He came off much more reasonable then he sounded as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012. That was not the job for him.

Ryan didn’t want the Speaker’s job. He saw what it did to John Boehner who couldn’t reason with the Freedom Caucus, the roughly forty conservative Tea Party Republican house members who won’t compromise on anything. Ryan felt he had a duty to serve, but under his own terms. He sleeps in his office in Washington, and goes home to his wife and three kids in Janesville, Wisconsin on the weekends. He said he will continue to do that, and not spend weekends flying around the country raising money for Republican candidates. He does come off as a small town, middle America guy who has values and beliefs that he believes in strongly. He says, and most agree, he is a policy guy more than a politician.

But now, he has to be the leader of a fractured party that is tearing itself apart, and a country that needs him to get government working again. He has to be able to work with the president and the Democrats to deal with the serious issues we all face in a dangerous world. We are all living with the fear of that terrorist gunman or bomber coming out of the darkness as they did in Paris on that warm Friday night. This is not the time for bluster and inflammatory rhetoric. It is the time for reasonable men to stand up and lead. Our lives may depend on it.