Gingrich, Newt 1943-

Newt Gingrich
1943-

U.s. representative (1979-1998);speaker (1995-1998)

Background

Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on 17 June 1943 and spent most of his childhood years with extended family, or in following his stepfather to military postings in Europe. He learned the pleasures of reading early, and his years overseas influenced his interest in European history and led to his determination to be involved in politics. He graduated from Emory University (1965) and earned his Masters (1968) and Ph.D. (1971) degrees from Tulane University. Beginning in 1970 he served as an assistant professor of history at West Georgia College. While he was a popular teacher, he did not envisage a long career as an obscure academic and, instead, got involved in politics. After unsuccessful runs for a seat in Congress in 1974 and 1976, he was finally elected in 1978 after dropping his previous commitment to environmentalism and adding a strong conservative message.

Changing the Nature of Congressional Politics

Gingrich burst onto the political scene in 1979 as a brash young Republican congressman who was unwilling to quietly take his seat on the back benches of the minority party while waiting for sufficient seniority to accrue to allow him to be influential. He wanted influence immediately and his ambitions for himself and the Republican Party were unconcealed. He wanted to help develop a Republican majority in the House and his personal ambition was to be Speaker of the House. From the outset he clashed with congressional stalwarts from both parties. He was a new order politician—impatient, willing to step on colleagues' toes, and innovative. He entered the House at a time when there was a profound sense that the United States was directionless and that its people were hungry for new leadership. This view was reinforced by the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency and a Republican majority in the Senate in 1980. Reagan's victory failed to translate into Republican success in the House, however, which remained in Democratic hands throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. In fact, Republicans suffered further losses in the House in the 1982 election. Over the next dozen years, Gingrich organized a movement and developed a political organization that led to a Republican majority in the House after the 1994 elections, propelled him to the speakership, and profoundly changed the fundamental assumptions and content of American politics for the remainder of the decade.

Fundamental Change

Although he was a member of the minority party and a newcomer in the House, a legislative body with 435 members that was notoriously slow in giving recognition to newly elected members, Gingrich moved quickly to make senior members take notice of him. He brought a new style that was neither genteel, nor quiet, nor deferential. His brashness quickly angered both the majority Democrats and many senior members of his own party. Nevertheless, he was appointed to lead a task force to develop a plan to obtain a Republican majority. Acting on the belief that the way to do so was not to get along with the Democrats, but to confront them whenever possible on both substantive and personal ethical issues, he developed a plan that included active and constant confrontation with the Democratic leadership. He used every opportunity and available medium to paint the Democrats as entrenched in power, unresponsive to the needs and desires of the electorate, and unethical. The first high-profile victim was Representative Charles Coles Diggs Jr. (D-Michigan), who became a target of Gingrich's ethics investigations and who was ultimately convicted of mail fraud. Gingrich's success ultimately led him to take on Speaker James Claude Wright Jr. (D-Texas), who resigned in 1989 in response to ethics charges initiated by Gingrich. In 1983 he created the Conservative Opportunity Society, which was made up of rebellious Republican conservative Representatives, and along with this core of true believers began laying the groundwork for a Republican majority. They used the new C-SPAN television channel to gain visibility and to get their message to the public (concealing the fact that they were often speaking to a nearly empty House chamber, which viewers did not see on the screen). A mixture of conservative themes such as supply-side economics, the war on drugs, concern about crime, and attacks on the welfare system were combined with a belief in the unlimited future of high technology, appeals for a balanced budget, and calls for a line-item veto and term limits in what became known as the Contract with America. In 1994 the Republicans used this new message to capture a majority of seats in the House.

New Republican Majority

The Contract with America was a stroke of political genius. Republicans could run for Congress behind a unified message. Republican candidates pledged to support: a balanced budget amendment and a line-item veto; an end to cuts from the defense budget and a ban on U.S. troops serving under international command; tax cuts; a rise in social security earnings limits; major modifications in welfare to encourage people to take benefits for only a short time; a cut in capital-gains taxes; measures to strengthen the family, including new enforcement provisions for child-support payments and strengthening the rights of parents; legal reforms that would put limits on punitive damages that juries could award in product liability cases; an anti-crime package; and term limits for members of Congress. These proposals were an ingenuous mixture of symbolism (term limits, no defense cuts, and an attack on crime) and substance (balanced budget amendment, line-item veto, welfare reform, and legal reform). Gingrich and the Contract with America must be credited for the resounding Republican electoral success in 1994, as they gained fifty-four seats in the House, becoming the majority for the first time since 1952. The Contract remained a motivating factor for many Republicans for the next four years, but the actual legislative record was mixed. The balanced budget amendment never went to the states for approval because, although it passed in the House, it failed in the Senate. The line-item veto was approved with President Bill Clinton's support, but was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1998. The defense budget was reduced and a bill to ban U.S. troops from serving under U.N. command failed in the Senate. Some tax cuts (for example, tax credits for children) were implemented, but the social security earnings limit was not raised; welfare reform was initiated by giving money and discretion to the states; some adjustments in capital-gains taxes were instituted; a child-support enforcement bill was passed; legal reform was stymied in the Senate; more money was appropriated, with President Clinton's support, for the war on crime; and term-limits legislation failed in the House. While the record in implementing the Contract was mixed, Gingrich increasingly influenced American politics and dominated the political agenda between 1994 and 1996.

Leaving Politics

Not everything Gingrich touched turned into political or personal gold. Ethical questions about the use of GOPAC (a Republican political action committee) funds in his 1990 election campaign and a S4.5 million dollar book deal led to a House Ethics Committee investigation. In January 1997 he was fined $300,000 for violating House rules barring the use of tax-exempt foundations for political purposes. Furthermore, some House Republicans, restless under his leadership and believing that President Clinton regularly outsmarted him, attempted to replace Gingrich as leader in 1997. He survived that attempt but was politically weakened. In the 1998 congressional elections Republicans expected to make gains in the number of House seats because of the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment facing Clinton. Instead, the Democrats gained five seats. The media and many House colleagues pinned responsibility for the losses on Gingrich. At a minimum the losses revealed that the Republican Party that was so unified under his leadership in 1994 was now deeply divided over social and economic issues, as well as over Gingrich's leadership. On 6 November 1998 Gingrich announced that he would not seek the speakership and would resign his seat.

The Legacy

Gingrich brought a new style to American politics—media-savvy, in-your-face, partisan, and ideological. It has become the mainstay of much of the business of Congress, especially in the House; it sparked a national debate about the decline of civility in American political discourse. Furthermore, he was responsible for setting the political agenda that made the Republican Party the majority party in the House after four frustrating decades of wandering in the political wilderness of seemingly perpetual minority status. His Contract with America enjoyed some very real successes, notably in welfare reform, and the issues it raised remain a fundamental part of the American political landscape at the end of the decade.

Sources:

Ed Gillespie and Bob Schellhas, eds., Contract with America: The Bold Plan by Rep. Newt Gingrich, Rep. Dick Armey and the House Republicans to Change the Nation (New York: Times Books, 1994).

Mel Steely, The Gentleman from Georgia: The Biography of Newt Gingrich (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2000).