Two weeks ago, the College Republicans announced that they will be bringing Newt Gingrich to campus. I have witnessed, as a member of the Great Issues Committee, Speaker Gingrich being turned away twice. Now I am elated that he is coming to our university. I want to take a moment and explain why Newt Gingrich is such an important political figure, and why the entire University community should be excited about his coming.
In November of 1994, the country was rocked by a dramatic shift in the power of our government. It was known as the “Republican Revolution.” Its chief architect: Newt Gingrich. As a young boy, I witnessed my conservatism morphing into reality. This reality was in the form of the Contract with America. This was conservatism with an action agenda; a conservatism that was disinclined to look back on the past with a sense of nostalgia, let alone with a desire to recreate some long-gone world, but rather one that envisioned a better future created by conservative reform. This ideological view was comprehensive; its adherents believed they had worked out the answers to the major policy questions facing the country. And while this view did indeed see the federal government as the source of many of the nation’s troubles, it did not hold that the problem was federal power as such. Change those wielding federal power, and the power could be harnessed to the ends of conservative reform. In the end, the Contract with America became enacted, and America is better off.
No one can say that Gingrich has nothing to show for his period at the forefront of U.S. politics. It is possible that Bill Clinton set out in 1993 to balance the budget while cutting taxes, to end the federal entitlement to welfare, to reverse the decline in military spending, and to pursue a missile defense. It is certain that Newt Gingrich set out in 1995 to do those things. It is possible that Clinton set out to move his party to the right in order to accommodate the wishes of a country that had grown suspicious of doctrinaire liberalism.
It is certain that the new Republican House speaker in 1995 set out to move the Democrat in the White House that way. And Democrats and Republicans alike in 1999 might ask Ronald Reagan’s question from 1980 and 1984: Are they better off than they were four years ago? If the answer to that is yes, one must assign Gingrich at a minimum the role of catalyst to Clinton’s reaction, and possibly a much greater role. Gingrich himself, surveying the changes in America during his tenure as House speaker, would have some reasons to be disappointed but many reasons to be pleased.
Many students question Gingrich’s relevancy; however, I believe Gingrich’s relevancy exists all around us. Everyone may not agree with Gingrich, but when Newt speaks, people in the policy arena listen. In the end, that policy Newt talks about is seemingly woven into the fabric of our legislature.
Barring the greatest political comeback of the next century, something of Churchillian proportion, Gingrich is unlikely ever to be a figure of much fondness outside the ranks of the GOP. And even among the cadre, opinions about him now are decidedly mixed. One day, though, conservatives and Republicans will probably be able to look back on 1994-95, the time of their Revolution, without a sense of pain or embarrassment or humiliation at defeat, but rather with the fondness with which one views one’s youth, including its follies and delusions. There they will rediscover the Newt Gingrich they have currently lost amid their frustration and disappointment. He could be maddening and he could be wrong, wrong, wrong, but when he was good, he was very, very good.
Nicholas Pistor is a junior studying political science.
