I started Newt Gingrich's 1998 book, Lessons Learned the Hard Way, which is about Newt's tenure as Speaker of the House. I have two items.
1. On pages 9-10, Newt discusses the National Endowment for the Arts. He states:
"Nor
had we conservatives taken the measure of how reluctant certain
important senators were going to be about going along with certain key
aspects of our agenda. For instance, one big disappointment for the
conservatives was our failure immediately to eliminate the National
Endowment for the Arts. Certainly any listing of the most bizarre and
extreme misuses of taxpayer money would have to include such examples of
NEA artistic grants as that to a certain HIV-infected homosexual
'performance artist' whose art consisted of cutting his uninfected
fellow performer onstage and dangling the blood over the audience so
they could experience the risk of contracting AIDS, or to two professors
standing at the Mexican border and handing out $10 bills to illegal
immigrants as they cross over into the United States, and so on and on.
Everyone has his own favorite cases. There is no question that if the
majority of ordinary Americans were to see many of the examples of where
NEA money goes, they would favor abolishing the system. Yet in the
Senate there has always been strong support for the agency, for the NEA
also supports such things as opera, ballet, and art museums, and the
major private donors to such honored art institutions are also major
supporters for senators. In any case, the social pressure of the
elites----and what is better loved by the elites than the arts?----has
always been more strongly felt in the Senate than in the House."
The
context of this passage is Newt's discussion of how the Senate
obstructed some of the passionate ideas of House conservatives. On the
one hand, Newt acknowledges that George Washington wanted for the Senate
to be a place of moderation, for Washington described "the Senate as
the cooling saucer into which the hot coffee from the cup of the House
should be poured" (Newt's words on page 6). On the other hand, Newt
wonders if Washington intended for that moderating influence to go as
far as it does, and to be as obstructive as it is!
Newt's
discussion of the NEA stood out to me because Newt chose to highlight
that the performance artist was a homosexual. I'm not sure that this
would float nowadays. Granted, Newt expresses conservative views on
marriage being between a man and a woman, and he criticizes what he
considers to be governmental attacks on the religious freedom of
Catholic charities to discriminate against gay couples who want to
adopt. But he doesn't publicly treat people's homosexuality in a
pejorative sense. My impression (and I am open to correction) is that few public figures do
criticize people for being homosexual these days, at least not in
public. In the 1990's, however, it was different, for homosexuals were
criticized by many right-wingers for being homosexuals. (Here's what wikipedia says about the case that Newt is discussing.)
Regarding
his comments on the NEA, I thought that Newt made somewhat of an effort
to understand the motivations of Senators and also to see why
many would consider the NEA to be valuable, for the NEA does good
things, such as supporting the opera, ballet, and art museums. But I
thought that his balance ended when he treated art as something for the
elite----as if others cannot be edified by a little culture.
2. On pages 16-17, Newt states:
"The
key to those years was to keep focused on what I dreamed of bringing
about for the country in general rather than on the liberal city in
which I was spending most of my working life. For remember: To work in
Washington is to wake up each morning surrounded by the Washington Post, the New York Times,
the national television networks, National Public Radio, lobbyists who
even if they are personally conservative are focused only on who's got
the power today, the Washington bureaucracies, and the Washington social
scene. From the time you wake up until the time you go to bed, unless
you take steps to defend against it, you are bombarded with opinions,
signals, and agendas that are antithetical to a conservative's own."
The
context of this passage is Newt's discussion of how transformative
leaders should hold fast to their vision for the country, even though
they will be criticized. Newt refers to Ronald Reagan, who did not care what the elites thought about him (going back to his days as a B-movie actor), and also to Margaret Thatcher, who chose not to read negative press stories about her.
One reason that I liked this passage was that it highlights that not all criticism is constructive criticism.
We have to sift through what is constructive and what is not. Another
reason is that Newt says that even a conservative can become wrapped up
in a Washington culture that is antithetical to his or her values. Conservatives
believe in less government, and they tend to champion advancement
through hard work, merit, and productivity rather than through political
machinations and ingratiating (think of Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden
in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and contrast them with James
Taggart). But Washington, D.C. is all about using political
machinations and ingratiating yourself with the "right people" to get
what you want, and conservatives can fall victim to this! I'll
add that such is the case even with progressives, who may go to
Washington intending to serve the people and to bring about reform, yet
they find themselves part of a system that likes the way things
currently are, and there is pressure on them to abandon their commitment
to change.