All the Subtlety of a Newtron Bomb

Who: KCRW
What: To the Point
When: December 5, 2011

Figuring the subtleties of Newt Gingrich is a bit like getting beaten by an angry Pillsbury Doughboy. That is, for all it might hurt, it is hard not to laugh at the absurdity of the proposition; and it is probably something one ought not undertake without first ingesting some sort of hallucinogen.

Still, though, Warren Olney and his panel of guests put in a pretty good effort at trying to explain the Newtron Bomber:

(27:28)

Olney: ... What about Newt Gingrich as speaker? It's interesting to hear that not that many members of Congress, apparently, are behind him. He hasn't had that position for a long time; he's been out of Congress for twelve years. But what was his Speakership like?

Killian: Well, he was actually a miserable Speaker. He was not popular with his own members. He was sort of bested by Bill Clinton on a number of issues. He was controversial, and [a] very uncharismatic public figure full of sort of controversial public pronouncements. None of the seventy-three members of the Class of '94 ... have endorsed him. And few, if any, Republicans who served in the House with him have endorsed him. Tom Coburn, yesterday—now a senator, from Oklahoma—a member of the Class of '94, did one of the Sunday shows and, you know, made reference—oblique reference—to Gingrich's being a very bad leader. And, you know, if our only view of Newt Gingrich as a sort of administrator would be his time as speaker, if one uses that as a yardstick, it's a pretty scary picture in terms of what kind of president he would be .... [H]e resigned under a cloud of financial misdeeds, having been reprimanded and paying a $300,000 fine, over a whole network of non-profit and for-profit organizations of his and the way they contributed political money, and money to him, and a variety of things, which I guess is the thousand pages that Nancy Pelosi has. And he was, you know, the only Speaker to resign under a cloud in the history of the republic. So that is not a particularly good track record.

Olney: When you mention the Class of 1994 not endorsing him, he was pretty much responsible for a lot of those people being elected, wasn't he?

Killian: He was very responsible. What you can say about Newt Gingrich—and I guess we're seeing it to some extent in this presidential campaign, he can be undisciplined, angry, thin-skinned; sides of his that I think he's been fairly effectively hiding in recent days—but he also is a brilliant tactician and strategist. And he envisioned the Republicans in the majority; they had not been in the majority since the Eisenhower administration. But he envisioned it when most other Republicans did not. They were just satisfied to be in the minority. And he recruited candidates, he gave them a strategy, he gave them tapes to play in their car as they traveled around to campaign events. He came up with the Contract With America. And yet all of these people that he—you know, they would say—and Joe Scarborough, now at MSNBC, Morning Joe, was a member of the Class of '94. And he told me ... that he didn't consider Newt Gingrich responsible for his election; he won his election himself, and rode a sort of—it was a moment when Bill Clinton was not particularly popular after his first two years. But Gingrich did really, really—you really have to give him credit for winning the majority for the Republicans.

(31:10)

• • •

(31:59)

Baker: ... It's important to remember that Newt Gingrich started out his professional career as an academic. And in fact was an academic at West Georgia State College, and I think has many of the unlovely characteristics that you find in the academic world, including intellectual showmanship—basically proving he was the smartest kid at the faculty meeting. And this is one of the things that really got under the skin of his colleagues; the kind of superciliousness, a kind of tendency not just to make a counterargument but to be dismissive of his colleagues, and as a consequence I think the feeling was that dealing with him was very difficult, and I think that manifested itself in the revolt against him in 1997, when some of the most prominent figures in the party—including now-Speaker John Boehner—decided that Gingrich was really out of control and needed to be replaced as Speaker. Now, the coup d'etat was squashed, but nonetheless the bitterness remained, and I think that when the vote to reprimand ... that came about in 1997 ... that there were many Republican votes for the reprimand. And more than that, a number of Republicans went on record as defending their vote in favor of the reprimand, including, for example, Fred Upton, who, of course, was one of the members of the Supercommittee.

Olney: Again, Russ Baker with Rutgers University. All this is very interesting, and as Mark Blumenthal told us earlier, that fifty-eight percent of Republicans polled [in Iowa] ... think he's the most knowledgeable and experienced. Does this suggest, Mark Blumenthal, that when they find out a little bit more about his record as Speaker, they might move away from him?

Blumenthal: Well, that's kind of the question. And I do think that while that number was from Iowa, you'd probably get very similar results nationwide .... Right now, we're looking at polling numbers around Republicans who are trying to decide who their nominee is going to be. And that, you know—I don't doubt that over the next five or six weeks at least, a lot of these arguments are going to get played out in the candidate debates that happen on cable television that have so far sort of written the story of the campaign. So we will see. For now, he is almost the perfect foil to candidates like Perry and Cain, who stood out as being not very knowledgeable, and not very experienced, at least in the example of Cain. So I think we will see how this plays out over the next couple weeks.

(35:08)

Gingrich might emerge as the personification of this Republican era. Republicans denounce academic elitism, yet Gingrich is said to have personified the problem. And Republicans denounce celebrity elitism, yet have also put Ronald Reagan, Sonny Bono, and Clint Eastwood in public office, and even gave Fred Thomas a moment's consideration in 2008. Of course, for Newt Gingrich, celebrity is a notch in the plus column. One might consider Republican populism about sexual purity, and note that Gingrich is a serial adulterer on his third marriage; perhaps getting plenty of practice qualifies him, in conservative eyes, to lecture on morality and the sanctity of marriage. Lobbyists and special interests? Apparently it's a good thing to have on one's résumé when one is a Republican. It's not so much the idea that both sides do it, but, rather, that it has become so transparent among conservatives in recent years, and Newt Gingrich is perhaps the most visible example, with exposure on so many fronts.

Figuring Newt Gingrich is an endeavor fraught with hazards, and perhaps even more unhealthy than a fistful of psychedelics and a beat-down from the tubby ghost of a muffin man.

(Image Credit: Monte Wolverton.)