What Does Newt Gingrich Know?

Sometimes a Question Just Answers Itself

In the New York Times

MAGAZINE PREVIEW

What Does Newt Gingrich Know?

By ANDREW FERGUSON

Consulting the literature — all 21 books by the self-proclaimed ideas man of politics.

The answer, of course, is "not much".  No it was not a trick question, that really is the answer.

An excerpt from the article

The ghosts for that first book served him unevenly. They got him in metaphor trouble from the first sentence. “We stand at a crossroads between two diverse futures,” he wrote. This crossroads, it transpired, faced an open window. That would be the window of vulnerability, which is widening. Three paragraphs later, the crossroads, perhaps swiveling on a Lazy Susan, is suddenly facing another window, also open. The important point, Gingrich writes, is that this window of opportunity is about to slam shut. And if it does? “We stand on the brink of a world of violence almost beyond our imagination.”

and

 After “Window of Opportunity,” Gingrich lapsed into a prolonged silence, at least as a literary man. As a politician, of course, he was a dervish, and by the time his next book appeared, in 1995, he was universally honored as the architect of one of the century’s great political triumphs, the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives the year before. “To Renew America” was written in the headlong rush that followed Gingrich’s elevation to the speakership and international fame.

Once again America faced a crossroads, though the word itself wasn’t used. “There is virtually no middle ground,” Gingrich wrote. He later concluded: “To renew or to decay. At no time in the history of our great nation has the choice been clearer.” To avert disaster, Gingrich had no choice but to present many numbered lists. In addition to the Six Challenges Facing America — similar to the challenges we faced 11 years before — and the “five basic principles that I believe form the heart of our civilization,” there were the five forces moving us toward worldwide medicine, a seven-step program to reduce drug use, the nine steps we can take immediately to advance the three revolutions in health care and more. The futurism was still there, too: “Honeymoons in space will be the vogue by 2020.”

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