Much of what Newt Gingrich is having to deal with right now is still-raw scar tissue from his four years as Speaker of the House, a term that ended more than a dozen years ago — a lifetime in politics. Gingrich was more responsible than anyone else in Congress for the Republican landslide of 1994, and he got most of the big, substantive stuff right. He got Republicans off on the right footing in January 1995 by holding to the Contract with America’s pledge to bring up each of its proposals within the first 100 days of Republican House control; he was the most important driving force in Congress for balancing the budget while cutting capital gains taxes, and he played a critical role in the telecommunications, financial services, and liability reforms which Bill Clinton signed and which helped create the nearly transformational wave of growth of the late 1990s. Many argued that on some things — Medicare reform, for example — he pushed too hard and imperiled the Republican majority, but I find it more likely that if he hadn’t pushed as hard in a forward direction, inertia and discord would likely have taken hold and Republicans would have been in even worse shape; if you’re not swimming, you’re sinking.
But the day-to-day stuff drove a lot of people crazy. You could listen to him one day give an-off-the-cuff speech which beautifully synthesized hundreds of years of American history with current philosophical, economic, cultural, and technological trends in a way that made that year’s agenda the moral and political imperative of the age; the next day he’d say maybe the weirdest thing you’d heard in your entire career. One day he’d walk House Republicans through an absolutely brilliant strategy for the coming year; the very next he’d undercut his own message, unnecessarily and in every media market in the country, with an idea he’d thought of while having breakfast. (I worked closely with him on one issue, and I was incredibly impressed by his policy grasp and strategic focus, but I could also see what drove those closer to him nuts.) What finally did him in — after he survived a coup attempt — was putting all his political eggs for the 1998 midterms in the Clinton impeachment basket. But even if Republicans hadn’t come so close to losing their majority, he may well not have returned. His colleagues were just that sick of him.
What’s impressive is that he hasn’t truly recovered in the eyes of many of his colleagues from that time. Bill Clinton’s rehabilitation is complete, despite the fact that over the course of his Administration he arguably (1) sold out key Democratic constituencies on issues like NAFTA, welfare reform, and balancing the budget with capital gains tax cuts , (2) compromised the prestige of the White House (and possibly national security) by having a sleazy affair with a White House intern, and (3) proclaimed fundamental Democratic ideology since FDR obsolete (“the era of big government is over”). Since leaving the House, Gingrich has been a solid Republican citizen, running his own think tank, being a leading thinker on health care reform, helping the party when asked, and — yes, it needs to be said — staying happily married. Why can’t people who served with him — people like Joe Scarborough and Jim Talent, as different temperamentally as in political experience (Scarborough served three terms, Talent four, including a stint as a committee chair, and the another term in the Senate) — forgive and forget?
Mark Knopfler — formerly of the band Dire Straits but now on his own — put the reasons as well as anyone in a song called “Done with Bonaparte.” Written in the person of one of Napoleon’s veterans after the disastrous invasion of Russia, the song recalls Napoleon’s vast promise:
“What dreams he made for us to dream
Spanish Skies, Egyptian sands.
The world was ours, we marched upon
Our little Corporal’s command.”
But then — reality:
“And I lost an eye at Austerlitz
The sabre slash yet gives me pain.
My one true love awaits me still
Flower of the Acquitaine.”
And finally, disillusion and anger:
“Save my soul from evil, Lord
and heal this soldier’s heart.
I’ll trust in thee to keep me, Lord
I’m done with Bonaparte.”
And that’s why, so many years after a Speakership in which, arguably, he did as well as anyone could reasonably be expected to do, Gingrich can’t find any of his colleagues to step forward for him. They’re just done with him. If he’s going to survive the scrutiny his record as Speaker is certain to get, he’s going to have to own up to those failings and convince people he’s changed. Otherwise he’ll be done too.
