Books in Brief
Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America by Newt Gingrich (Regnery, 244 pp., $27.95). Like cockroaches and the poor, Newt Gingrich, it seems, will always be with us. Actually, that's an unfair comparison; Gingrich, after all, is rich. Besides, he prefers being likened to a different insect: "We planned in cicadas," he has cryptically told reporters, referring to the noisy, red-eyed pests that emerge from the earth every 17 years to mate and die. It's an apt metaphor. Gingrich first sprung out from the Georgia red clay in 1978, when, after years of effort, he won a seat in the House of Representatives. In Washington he burrowed below again, where he quietly fashioned the institutions of Republican revival. Holding the Contract With America in his right hand he reappeared in 1994, when Americans elected the first Republican Congress in over 40 years. Gingrich became speaker of the House. He was the Robespierre of the Republican Revolution: intellectual, visionary, ambitious, and audacious. His reign was brief. In 1998 he resigned and moved back to Georgia.
Or so it seemed. It's now clear that Gingrich instead went underground, as he had done before, and in his subterranean state he began several new careers, simultaneously, as a political strategist, a talking head, a health care consultant, and an author. His latest book is both polemical and programmatic. In it he attacks the "liberal elite minority," judges who disagree with him, and terrorists. He unveils a new Contract With America, which includes Social Security reform, "Entrepreneurial Public Management," and "congressional reform."
"Congressional reform" is an echo of the original Contract With America, which promised to force "Congress to live under the same laws as every other American," cut congressional staffs, slash budgets, and enact term limits. Another item in Gingrich's new contract--"balance the federal budget"--was also in the last one. As was a third item: "Defend America." Indeed, this new contract provokes profound nostalgia; it is the same feeling, I'm told, as recalling a lost love, or dipping a madeleine in tea. As the book progresses the pangs of nostalgia grow. In the end, you realize that Winning the Future is really about the past; about what Gingrich and his band of revolutionaries couldn't accomplish ten years ago; about what they still have left on their plates.
What did the revolutionaries accomplish? That's the question answered by The Enduring Revolution: How the Contract with America Continues to Shape the Nation by Major Garrett (Crown Forum, 325 pp., $25.95). Before he was on Fox News Channel, Garrett was a print journalist, and he's still a fantastic reporter. For his book he spoke to Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Bruce Reed, Grover Norquist, and many others. He anchors his narrative 20 years ago, then quickly retraces the Republican party's ascendance. This is a well-researched and lucidly written book, but sometimes it devolves into the Whig interpretation of history--telling us a story of inevitable progress.
The Enduring Revolution ends in November 2003, when Congress passed President Bush's prescription drug entitlement. Garrett provides a blow-by-blow account of the bill's passage, and his story is detailed and grim. The House leadership strong-armed reluctant conservatives into voting for the drug bill, the largest expansion of government in almost half a century. Garrett concedes that "to many conservatives" the Medicare reform was "the triumph of politics for the sake of power." Reading this chapter I was struck most by former Speaker Gingrich's presence on the House floor that November night, hanging around that body like a phantom limb. He sweet-talked conservatives into voting Yes, and promised a coming age of reform. It was just like old times.
--Matthew Continetti