Fourteen video cameras lined the ballroom of the National Press Club on a steamy August day, drawn by the back-to-the-future presence of Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker and possible presidential candidate. The audience of journalists, industry representatives and assorted hangers-on sat transfixed as Gingrich wowed them with his versatile intellect and his political derring-do.
In an angry election season, this could be Gingrich's moment. He's a bomb thrower, and this time he's hurling smart bombs, blasting risk-averse candidates and the army of consultants that have sapped all spontaneity out of the presidential-election process. His fury at the ways of Washington echoes the way he tapped into voter disgust with the status quo in 1994 when he led the Republican revolution that captured control of the House for the first time in 40 years. He defined the conservative takeover, and then became part of its decline when he resigned the speakership in 1999.
Now he is poised to shake up the system once again. With such media titans nodding their approval as David Broder, dean of the Washington press corps, and Marvin Kalb, the former CBS newsman turned media analyst, Gingrich took aim at the presidential-nominating process and particularly the flurry of faux debates. They're more like auditions than a serious exchange of ideas, he said, likening them to a combination of "The Bachelor," "American Idol" and "Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?"
Gingrich would like to see the candidates mix it up with each other in smaller settings, even across party lines, but he knows that's not going to happen. So he's reserving his firepower for a bigger idea that he thinks frustrated voters would welcome, and that is nine debates featuring the two major-party nominees, one each week between Labor Day and Election Day 2008. It's not a new idea. Sixteen years ago, Kalb and a group of journalists and scholars, spurred by voter revulsion with the negative tone of the 1988 election, suggested "Nine Sundays" of 90-minute debates. All the candidates in '92 were pleased with the proposal, but none of them accepted it, Kalb said.
It's not surprising that the polite introduction of an idea that requires candidates to take a risk would be quietly shelved. But if anybody can tap into voter anger to force an overhaul of the political process, it's Gingrich. He did it in 1994 with the Contract With America, and he's prepared to enter the presidential race as the agent for change on the Republican side. Watching him, it's hard sometimes to square his new-found zeal for civil and civic dialogue across party lines with the bombastic figure that first burst on the national scene calling Democrats "pathetic." But he's a smart guy, and a serious guy, and he just might pull it off.
Gingrich says he'll wait until October and see how Fred Thompson and the others are doing before he decides whether to jump in the race. "The trick is not to delude yourself," he said in response to a question. He would only run if there was a large enough demand, and if his party was still looking for someone capable of debating Sen. Hillary Clinton, who he called a "very formidable professional." Gingrich dismissed the notion that getting in the race late would hurt his chances. He said voters don't focus on the election until after Christmas, and that six to 12 weeks should be plenty of time to design a winning campaign.
Gingrich believes the country is in a period of great peril, comparable to the time when Abraham Lincoln emerged as a leader. He cites the Lincoln-Douglas debates as his model for political exchange. Douglas, a successful senator, did not want to debate the upstart lawyer from Springfield, Ill., but Lincoln followed him from place to place, nagging him until he agreed. The debates were three hours long. There was no moderator. Though Lincoln lost the election, the debates established him as a figure of consequence and set him up for the presidential election in 1860. During that campaign, he delivered one very sober speech at New York's Cooper Union college. It was 7,300 words long and took him two hours. By Election Day, enough voters had read or heard about the speech to assure him victory. Lincoln wouldn't deliver another speech until his farewell address in Springfield on his way to be inaugurated president.
Gingrich, a former history professor, was reminded of all this when earlier this year he debated Mario Cuomo, the former governor of New York, at Cooper Union. The two genially sparred, and when moderator Tim Russert asked Cuomo who would be his party's best candidate, Cuomo replied that it was the wrong question. Russert should be asking who would be the best president, Cuomo said. "Sometimes you have to put patriotism above partisanship," Gingrich said. These are revolutionary words from somebody with Gingrich's sharply partisan background. The country wants different leadership, and Gingrich sees an opening. It's hard to imagine him winning the nomination much less the presidency with the baggage he brings, but he'll have a following if he can break through the canned commercialized process we're trapped in.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
