Lots of great Corner analyses on the Aspiring President. I’d like to add this throwback: Andy Ferguson’s amazing 1997
essay, “The Collected Works of Newt Gingrich, Vol. 1,” from
The Weekly Standard. We pick up where Andy reports on a 1997 House Ethics Committe report on Gingrich:
The appendix features more than 1,000 pages of speech drafts, personal notes, letters, memos, and charts that Gingrich and his allies provided as exhibits during the committee’s investigation.
It is a remarkable document. Read in its entirety, it establishes a kind of narrative, a step-by-step recounting of the evolution of Gingrich’s public and private thinking. The appendix is the most compelling portrait yet of the current leader of the Republican party.
And he is leader of even more than that. “Gingrich — primary mission,” reads one of Gingrich’s handwritten notes from December 1992. “Advocate of civilization. Definer of civilization. Teacher of the rules of civilization . . . Leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.”
By the time he wrote this note, Gingrich had already hit on the verbal formula RENEWING AMERICAN CIVILIZATION to summarize the scope of his work (RAC for short). RAC was a successor to the earlier CONSERVATIVE OPPORTUNITY SOCIETY (COS for short), which would emerge, Gingrich theorized, from the CITIZENS’ OPPORTUNITIES MOVEMENT. But before COS became RAC, there was THE AMERICA THAT CAN BE, an offspring of the CARING HUMANITARIAN REFORM MOVEMENT. That movement was in turn based on the TRIANGLE OF AMERICAN SUCCESS, also known as the TRIANGLE OF AMERICAN PROGRESS.
Confused? As Gingrich explained in a 1990 speech, “We summarize the Triangle of American Progress with one sentence: Common sense focused on opportunities and success. It’s a very radical sentence.” So radical, indeed, that it isn’t even a sentence.
It annoys me to no end when people blithely refer to Newt as an "ideas guy". You generally have to have idea with some intelligence behind them to be an "ideas guy". Otherwise you're just a Dilbert-esque Pointy-Haired Boss type.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRemember, Newt's the smartest guy in the room!
Well, after Alvin Toffler.
And maybe Deepak Chopra.
And Dr. Phil.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse" 'Gingrich — primary mission,' reads one of Gingrich’s handwritten notes from December 1992. 'Advocate of civilization. Definer of civilization. Teacher of the rules of civilization . . . Leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.' "
He forgot: "The Oncoming Storm. The Lonely God. The Last of the Timelords." (sue me, I'm a Dr. Who fan).
But seriously - that first quoted paragraph was written, not as it would seem, by a pre-pubescent boy into comic-book geekdom, but by a 49 year old man. That is an intensely disturbing level of self-absorption, bordering on clinical grandiosity, for a person then well into maturity. It reads like some of the (relatively) saner early writings of L.Ron Hubbard, who also like to create air-castle puzzle boxes of organizations and movements within movements.
But useful nonetheless - it's the output of a mind not capable of sustained discipline, and another evidence point against a destructive and pointless candidacy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt makes me wonder if at bottom here we simply have a case of jealously of Ryan. Maybe Gingrich, like Obama, just doesn't like being intellectually upstaged.
I was in college during the time when Gingrich was seen as the conservative hero, so I do recall it. But the truth is that Gingrich and his generational group in Congress gravely failed us. He's a deeply flawed man who never lived up to the hype in his heyday and today is simply an embarrassment.
It only took him five days in the race to give the Democrats ammunition to use against nearly every GOP House member. He just needs to go away, but his ego (and evidently his ambitious mistress turned wife as well) won't allow him to do so. It's unfortunate. Conservatives are going to have treat him with the contempt he deserves. He has brought it on himself.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA few thoughts:
1) It is a sentence, it's just beyond the grammatical comprehension of those who do not consider themselves a worthy candidate for 'Leader of the Civilizing Forces.'
2) Just curious, was he planning to define the rules of civilization such that marital fidelity would not be one of them? If so, that would make it a tad easier for him to be the 'Teacher of the Rules of Civilization'.
3) Again, just curious, but I wonder if he was always the last kid picked to be on the team, whatever that team might have been.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd maybe Deepak Chopra.
And Dr. Phil.
---
And Elmo
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWatching Newt self-destruct is great fun, but it makes me a little sad as a Democrat. I think that it is happening way to early in the election season.
Also a serious question for the political historians- Is the current level of intra-party cannibalism unprecedented? I have been a political observer for over 30 years and this seems to have reached a new-level. Republican primary politics is no country for old men.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseElmo like triangles!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI used to be a Newtbacker, years ago, not least because the Left despised him so and I liked the idea of edgy candidates, but I was young and knew next to nothing about him. I know only a little more now, but everything I've learned about him makes me recoil in disgust. I had said if Huckabee or Palin won the nomination, I might abstain from voting, but if Gingrich won it, I might just have to campaign for Obama! :D
His ego makes Obama look like a exemplar of humility, and I think Americans are a little done with "professors" and "idea men" talking down to us little people who just don't understand that their recycled, failed policies under brilliant new marketing slogans are precisely what this country needs.
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