Gingrich For President?
GLASS, ANDREW J.
Washington-USA GINGRICH FOR PRESIDENT? By Andrew J. Glass Washington Does A national politician who paid a $300,000 fine last year for unethical fund-raising lapses, plus another $900,000...
...With political life in Washington increasingly coming to resemble the daytime network soaps, however, such attacks may serve to heighten interest in Gingrich's White House candidacy, rather than damage his prospects for getting the nomination...
...But his success in building legislative alliances and his dealings with the kind of "A-list" people who were at Davos have deepened his intellect andraisedhis political sights...
...In these exchanges Gingrich runs through what he sees as potential traps for Clinton with a fierce candor White House aides rarely muster...
...Andrew J. Glass, a longtime New Leader contributor, is senior correspondent and a columnist for Cox Newspapers...
...Having traded in her Congressional seat for a weekend CBS anchor's chair, Molinari lists Gingrich's political sins as a propensity to break down "in tears of self-pity...
...When Gingrich announced his intentions, Molinari writes, "We were speechless...
...allies...
...Now, that's the model...
...and a laser-beam desire "to run for President in 2000...
...Dubbed the world's richest man, Gates also comes equipped with a big ego...
...Some House Republicans consider the Speaker an apostate, since he lacks the distaste for government most famously ordained by President Ronald Reagan...
...Newt's approval ratings were below 3 0 per cent—and he was planning his run for the Presidency...
...In the wake of his 1997 decision to oust Representative Bill Paxon of New York from the House leadership for having staged an unsuccessful coup against him, Paxon's wife, former Congresswoman Susan Molinari, skewers the Speaker in Representative Mom, her get-even book due out in May...
...Moreover, he remains a topnotch political fundraiser even as he further hones his speaking and debating skills...
...Rather, he argued, the Marines would have to invade Iraq, establish a beachhead in the port city of Basra, and if need be drive into Baghdad...
...As Gingrich put it to the Republicans in his inimitable style: "One of the great lessons of the quality movement is that if you do something right the first time it is actually cheaper...
...a proclivity "to compare himself to the giants of history...
...Treasury bills and thereby helps to finance day-to-day Federal outlays...
...But Gingrich's perceived arrogance—unbowed in the face of his ethics scandal and his recent bottom-dwelling approval rankings— carries a political price tag...
...Reaganism, in its pure form, cared only about shrinking the Federal pie...
...By Andrew J. Glass Washington Does A national politician who paid a $300,000 fine last year for unethical fund-raising lapses, plus another $900,000 in legal fees in that still open case, have a realistic shot at the Presidency...
...As Gingrich saw it, air power alone could never achieve this goal...
...It's a very different model and requires a profound change in the schools of public administration and a profound change in the very way we structure government...
...Most of us came away with a surprisingly favorable impression...
...He would scrap the entire system that now funnels Social Security and Medicare taxes into U.S...
...It is clear that, behind the scenes, a working partnership has developed between Gingrich and Clinton...
...ever since, both nations have been firm U.S...
...Instead, those funds would be invested in a broad basket of stocks and bonds...
...That trait was evident when he met in Davos with Bill Gates, co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation...
...Under the forum's two-tier setup favoring so-called media leaders, a few selected journalists were permitted to observe the Republican Speaker of the House in several private settings...
...Thus in late January, with the Pentagon's harsh bombing campaign on the drawing boards, Gingrich told the President he should do whatever is necessary to oust Saddam and pave the way for a new era in Baghdad...
...She calls him a "blubbering megalomaniac...
...The Speaker's ability to put forth a new, plausible agenda for his country, his party and himself was in vivid contrast to his defensive stance there in 1997, when the House ethics charges sizzled on the front burner...
...Members were grumbling openly...
...The ethics decisions were serious matters...
...a determination to foment chaos in Republican ranks "that crippled his caucus...
...2) ensuring that every child is actually educated in school and every adult enjoys ongoing lifetime learning opportunities...
...And Gingrich's growing stature among an expanding circle of influential people apparently has persuaded him that he could move into the White House on January 20,2001...
...A blue-ribbon Republican task force will be convened shortly to do the political spadework for accomplishing this in 2000...
...With his poll ratings climbing back to the high 40s, he is no longer hugely unpopular...
...You can emerge from the current assault on Microsoft's business practices—which are widely viewed by both the industry and the government as predatory—in one of two ways: either as a latter-day Andrew Carnegie, the turn-of-the-century steel magnate who is revered for having channeled his vast fortune into worthy causes, or else as John D. Rockefeller, a mogul of the same era who fought in vain to block Teddy Roosevelt from breaking up Standard Oil...
...While keeping faith with his conservative base, Gingrich managed to say a good deal that appealed to the cohort of influential Democrats who, like most other participants, shelled out upwards of $35,000 to attend the exclusive week-long conclave...
...In the process, he managed to baffle his fat cat audience by trotting out an odd pantheon of heroes, consisting of Max Weber, the German sociologist and political economist who died shortly after World War I, and Peter Drucker and Edward Deming, latter-day popularizers who deal in the arcana of corporate efficiency...
...One of the things I am proposing is a profound reform of schools of public administration, where they now take all the books by Weber and others on bureaucracy and relegate them to the history course...
...They have huddled on such tough issues as the Asian financial crisis and how to deal with Iraq's Saddam Hussein...
...he thoroughly dislikes getting advice...
...Meanwhile, soon after returning from Davos Gingrich spent the better part of a morning before the National Republican Congressional Committee—ground zero of today's mainstream conservatives— delivering what amounted to a classroom-style lecture echoing his agenda themes...
...no tinkering at the margins for him...
...It calls for (1) waging a war on drugs and improving public safety...
...In 1945, Gingrich recalled, American forces were fully prepared to fight their way into Berlin and Tokyo to crush Hitler and a militaristic Japan...
...You don't pay more for quality, you pay less for quality, because if you get into the habit of quality you actually lower the number of errors and therefore it actually gets done at less cost...
...For years, Gingrich was content to bask in the glow of his adoring conservative base, which is still intact...
...The mistake House Republicans made at the time minted a shiny copper penny that plopped into Clinton's cup and enabled him to stage a political comeback...
...where we measure how much did you get done, not how much did you spend...
...Gingrich flew into the Alpine ski resort right after President Bill Clinton's State of the Union address...
...And they introduce Peter Drucker and Edward Deming and modern management and then spend their entire time talking about creating a 21 st-century government based on achievement, not input...
...Unless the Internal Revenue Service revives the smoldering ashes of the ethics case, a highly doubtful prospect, he is in no danger of being ousted before he resigns in late 1999 or early 2000 to pursue the Oval Office...
...Like Clinton then, Gingrich is now in a good strategic position...
...Perhaps, if his name is Newt Gingrich...
...Indeed, the run for the Presidency has taken center stage in his mind...
...In brushing aside Molinari's charges, Gingrich's press aide, Christina Martin, noted that "as the author of several books, including the upcoming Lessons Learned the Hard Way [also scheduled to appear this spring], the Speaker understands the positive impact of a little prepublication hype on book sales and looks forward to swapping books with his friend Susan...
...These days, too, in public and private settings, Gingrich is talking directly to the aging boomers, the core group to whom he targets his four-point agenda designed to serve as a Presidential springboard...
...Some weeks ago members of the World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of elites in Davos, Switzerland, had a chance to kick the rhetorical tires of the new and improved Gingrich model during a test rollout that was screened off from press reviews...
...One bitter lesson that Gingrich learned the hard way in 1995 is never to shut down the government in a battle with the White House over spending and tax priorities...
...Gingrich nevertheless told the babyboomer billionaire, you are at a crossroads in your career...
...The onetime history professor from Georgia tells it as he sees it, showing no particular penchant for pleasing people...
...3) a complete overhaul of the Social Security system...
...Gingrich wants to alter the recipes, to make bold Executive decisions involving incremental legislative goals...
...Gingrich's proposed Social Security changes are decidedly un-Clintonesque...
...and (4) a 25 per cent cap on the tax burden from all levels of government...
Vol. 81 • February 1998 • No. 2
