Rick Santorum begins odd job

Today's edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Pennsylvania's largest and the nation's third oldest newspaper,carried the first effort by its newly-hired regular columnist, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, whose column will appear every other Thursday, starting today. It follows:

Rare welcome to a red-blooded conservative
And get ready for some unpredictable ideas.

"Odd." It is, indeed, odd to write a column every other Thursday for a paper that used that very word to describe me. Actually, odd was one of the nicer terms used in The Inquirer to describe me. Imagine these words next to your name in your high school yearbook - disingenuous, snake oil peddler, smug, arrogant, chicken-livered, intolerant and fatalistic. And most of those labels were in news stories.

My new employer also claimed not so long ago that I "inspire contempt" and "have lost my mind" and that my actions bore a remarkable resemblance to Joe McCarthy's. You know? The namesake of McCarthyism. At the time, I took solace from the implied compliment. At least The Inquirer thought I was making a substantial mark on my generation. Not bad for someone they also called a "doofus."

As regular readers of this page know, these pejoratives only scratched the surface of the contempt that this paper - and its readers, in what seemed to me an endless stream of letters to the editor - had for me and my performance in office.

What could have possibly possessed Chris Satullo to invite me to be a columnist shortly before he decided to step down as Editorial Page editor? Maybe it had something to do with his moving on. Other theories range from premature senility to guilt.

Judging from the flood of letters to the paper that followed the announcement, most believe it was a pure business decision to attract more readers. I see: Bring on a writer who got less than 20 percent of the city vote and about 40 percent of the suburban vote in 2006 to expand readership. Shrewd.

I readily admit that most of the readers of The Inquirer may not be big fans of conservative ideas. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't have the opportunity to consider them. It's an unfortunate fact that over the last decades, the institutional left - Hollywood, the mainstream media and academia - have not only become intolerant of dissent from their own orthodoxies, but also often attack anyone who espouses an opposing view.

I had the honor of speaking at Penn, Temple and Penn State last month. When I asked conservative student organizers at each school about the support they receive from the faculty, they all had the same response: laughter.

But it's really no joke. Most of the great urban daily papers just feign attempts to balance what is invariably a liberal editorial board. George Will or - for years here at The Inquirer - Tom Ferrick was trotted out as the token voice of the great unwashed.

To The Inquirer's credit, it has recently added the ideologically unpredictable Michael Smerconish, and now this red-state, red-blooded conservative to their team. Good for them. I mean, us!

I call my column "The Elephant in the Room" for two reasons. First, it reflects the hope that I can give voice to the thousands of people who either read this section of the paper only as a source of enemy intel or don't read it because it is bad for their blood pressure.

At a time when the conservative movement is rudderless and the lineup of future standard bearers is a mix of Johnnies-come-lately and Johnnies-never-been, I hope to provide some ideas that could help restore America's confidence in the conservative movement.

I also hope that my voice will not be as predictable as some regular readers may think. It may surprise you on occasion, as the few dozen of you who have read my book It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good know, that I don't always fit the mold. For example, I have had my share of conservative critics who object to the more activist role for government I favor in dealing with poverty both at home and abroad.

Second, I want to focus many of my columns on the big issues people may not want to confront and offer readers arguments that may, as Editorial Page editor Harold Jackson said in announcing my column on Oct. 24, "shake their prior belief."

I have heard for years that Americans are disgusted with the polarization of politics. Much of that, it seems to me, is because people take the path of least resistance and join the crowd. That is why blue areas in America are getting bluer and red areas redder. Some have so personalized their contempt for the opposing view that they can no longer view issues with any sense of inquiry or objectivity. Neither is good for American democracy.

For our system to work, we must be able to debate issues civilly and compromise. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I don't think compromise is a dirty word. Believe it or not, I was able to pass more than 200 pieces of legislation that I authored. In the Senate, I needed at least five Democrats to vote with me to pass a bill. You can't compromise if you aren't willing to listen to the other side's point of view and incorporate it into your own ideas.

Thank you, Inquirer, for giving me that opportunity - for inviting this elephant into your living room. I hope it proves entertaining and enlightening. I promise to be gentle. The only thing I'd like to trample is readers' expectations.

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Rick Santorum (rsantorum@phillynews.com) is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center