Why newt gingrich should be president

From the Contract with America to the rise of the Tea Party and the Trump presidential campaign, his fingerprints can be seen throughout some of the most divisive episodes in contemporary American politics. Burning Down the House presents the alarming narrative of how Gingrich and his allies created a new normal in Washington. Princeton University. Search form Search. Julian E. And rather than focusing all the time on right versus left, conservative versus liberal, he went after the Democrats.

He called them a corrupt Democratic establishment that maintained its power unfairly, unconstitutionally. Democrats had passed many reforms during the s to make Washington a better place. They had instituted ethics reforms, for example, that tried to hold leaders more accountable. They had changed the campaign finance laws and a new generation of Democrats had entered and they thought that would be sufficient.

And they didn't understand that Gingrich had a whole other kind of political game in mind. In , he would go on C-SPAN all the time, speaking from the floor of the House, basically accusing Democrats of being unpatriotic and not supporting Ronald Reagan's efforts to fight communism.

When he goes after Speaker Jim Wright in , he essentially criminalizes the speaker arguing he's trying to fill his pockets at the expense of taxpayers.

And he tells them, use words like corruption, traitors, sick [and] radical as a way to describe your opponent. So language was essential to him in large part because the right language would get you the attention that he needed.

This was one of his first big moments in Washington. And he and a group of Republicans had gone on every night and made these blistering speeches about specific Democrats. And viewers didn't know the chamber was empty. So when Democrats didn't respond to the charges, it looked like they were guilty.

And then when Speaker Tip O'Neill turns the cameras on the chamber and shows it's empty and when he makes that speech about Gingrich — Gingrich doesn't stop. They're corrupt.

And for the first time, because of the confrontation, Gingrich was on national television and he really arrived as a figure. So he understood how to play the whole news cycle and that story of cam scam incredibly well. On how and why Gingrich took down Speaker Jim Wright. He's an old school Texas Democrat, believed in the social safety net. He was not a dove, but he also believed in restraint overseas, especially after Vietnam. Gingrich picks up on stories that had emerged in the national and Texas press about Wright.

And there were lots of different stories, too. He really hones in on one. Wright sold these books that he published in bulk to groups before he spoke to them, which was not an ethical violation. Control of the Senate, meanwhile, hinges on two runoff races in Georgia early next month. If Republicans preserve their narrow majority, will Biden be able to work with the majority leader, Mitch McConnell?

And Mitch will be happy with either outcome. There is a historical rhyme here with the s when Gingrich led a Republican majority against a centrist Democratic president in the shape of Clinton. There may be lessons from that experience for both sides.

He signed welfare reform, he signed capital gains tax cut, he signed four balanced budgets. Could Biden, who is making overtures to Republicans and giving little voice to the left in his cabinet, pay a similar price? The Clinton v Gingrich years are also often cited as the start of the rot in American democracy. Gingrich was a political pugilist who hurled insults, played to the cameras and set about blowing up the bipartisan consensus. His Contract with America proposals in helped Republicans win a majority in the House for the first time in four decades.