Newt Gingrich's Lessons Learned the Hard Way 8

I finished Newt Gingrich's Lessons Learned the Hard Way.  In this post, I'd like to highlight what Newt says on page 205:

"...we must initiate an all-out effort to get current addicts off drugs.  Finally, we have to take back our prisons, with weekly drug testing and mandatory education and work programs designed to turn back out on the street people who are drug-free and have the ability to earn an honest living."

I appreciated the tone of this, especially in light of what Newt said earlier in the book about criminals.  Newt said that a felon should not be allowed to vote in Congress, for it's inappropriate for his vote to cancel out the votes of law-abiding citizens.  He ridiculed Michael Dukakis' push to register prisoners to vote, saying that this was not a pressing concern to many Americans, who wanted to be protected from criminals.  And he criticized Dukakis' weekly furlough program, which gave Willie Horton the opportunity to torture people.

I agree with Newt that the weekend furlough for Willie Horton and other violent criminals was inappropriate and reckless.  At the same time, I think that it is important to respect the humanity of criminals as well as victims and those who desire protection in society.  In my opinion, these concerns have to be balanced, and, in a sense, respecting the humanity of those who broke the law is a way to rehabilitate them and thereby protect society.  Just continuing to lock people up does not help society, since prisons are expensive.

I'm not saying any of this as an absolute.  Some criminals need to be in prison for life.  There may even be cases when the death penalty is appropriate.  But the reason that I appreciated what Newt said on page 205 is that he was in favor of drug treatment and rehabilitation.  I've heard people (especially tough-on-crime conservatives) lament that prisoners get educational opportunities in prison.  "Yeah, they go to jail, become a lawyer, and come back to sue society!", some have said.  But what good does it do not to provide education and job-training to people in prison?  They'd be less likely to commit another crime if they had work skills and a job.

Newt Gingrich's Lessons Learned the Hard Way 7

As I have read Newt Gingrich's Real Change and Lessons Learned the Hard Way, I have wondered something: Does Newt believe that the Republicans should adopt the tactics of the Democrats?  Newt says that the Democrats are more effective at governing than Republicans (though Newt thinks that the Democratic policies are bad for the country), that the Democrats are more cohesive, and that the Democrats enforce group-think, whereas the Republicans have more independent thought in their ranks.

My impression has been that Newt thinks that the Republicans can learn things from the Democrats.  He says in Real Change that Republicans need to learn how to govern as a majority party, rather than retaining the minority party mindset that they had even when they were in the majority.  In Lessons Learned the Hard Way, Newt tells the story about how conservative activist Paul Weyrich was mistakenly invited to "a liberal meeting on civil rights issues", and, when Weyrich observed the cohesion and the coordination of strategy at that meeting, he went on to establish "a whole raft of conservative organizations and institutions" (page 107).  Newt also expresses admiration for Ted Kennedy for how Ted consistently pushed his liberal agenda over the years, and that is consistent with Newt's view that the Republicans likewise should have a vision and take the offense in pushing the agenda that they think is best for the country.

At the same time, Newt supports the independent and entrepreneurial spirit of Republicans, as opposed to the enforced group-think that exists in the Democratic Party.  Newt actually sees a little bit of himself in the House conservatives who sought to overthrow him as Speaker.  And Newt also expresses admiration for Ohio Congressman (now Governor) John Kasich, even though Newt disagreed with Kasich's stance against the B-2 bomber and a budget that Kasich was promoting.  Newt believes that the Republican Party is best when it is open to fresh, outside-of-the-box, and even dissident ideas.

I do not know as much about the Congress as Newt Gingrich does, but I question his model that the Democrats are a party of leftist group-think, whereas the Republicans tolerate dissent.  There may be truth to that, but I don't think it's the whole story.  The Democrats, after all, have the Democratic Leadership Council, which is more conservative.  Moreover, the Blue Dog Democrats were skeptical about Barack Obama's health care plan.  And the Republicans have exercised their share of party discipline, as occurred with regards to the prescription drug benefit.

Newt Gingrich's Lessons Learned the Hard Way 6: Sonny Bono

In my latest reading of Newt Gingrich's 1998 book, Lessons Learned the Hard Way, I enjoyed Newt's anecdote about the late Republican Congressman Sonny Bono.

The context was that some House conservatives were disappointed with Newt and were plotting to overthrow him from the Speaker-ship.  Why were they so upset with Newt?  They thought that Newt was too accommodating to the other side, and they were also disappointed when Newt helped to pass flood relief legislation that they considered to be too extravagant, and which contained a provision for a certain amount of sampling in the census (an issue that I discussed in yesterday's post).  Moreover, Newt acknowledges that he did not invest much time in listening to their complaints, which could have prevented a lot of problems.

In the midst of all of this, Sonny Bono told the story to House Republicans about how he was once a famous entertainer and singer, yet his career fell from its glory.  Newt relates: "He went, he said, from writing and performing gold records and producing one of the most popular television shows of the early 1970s to being only a guest performer...He wryly described his descent from huge dressing room, to small dressing room, to shared dressing room, to permission to use the men's room" (page 162).

Sonny's fall from glory really hit him when he had a guest spot on Fantasy Island and he botched up his only line in that episode.  Instead of saying "It's a nice day, Tatoo", he said "It's a nice day, Pontoon", and the actor playing Tatoo gave him a lot of grief over that!  Sonny then realized that God was telling him to move on.  And Sonny moved on.  Sonny owned a restaurant, became mayor of Palm Springs, and later became a Congressman.  Sonny was exhorting the Republican Congressmen to move on and to remember that this was not their last shot.

According to Newt, Sonny melted the tension with his self-deprecating humor and his shy modesty.  Newt says on page 162 that "He will be missed more deeply than he in his modesty would perhaps ever have believed" (page 162).

I loved this anecdote because it reminded me of how cool it was to be a Republican in the 90's.  The Republicans swept Congress, and one of those incoming Congressmen was the legendary Sonny Bono.  It was sad when he died in that skiing accident.  I was happy to learn from Newt's book that Sonny was a good guy, for not all celebrities are!

Newt Gingrich's Lessons Learned the Hard Way 5

I have two items for my write-up today on Newt Gingrich's 1998 book, Lessons Learned the Hard Way.

1.  Newt talks about one of the prominent ethics charges that was brought against him (the only one that wasn't dropped): that he used tax-exempt money for political purposes, namely, a course that he was teaching and distributing entitled "Renewing American Civilization".  As Newt states on page 100, "The IRS regulations involving tax-exempt educational foundations allow such foundations to beat the drum to their heart's content in support of ideas and programs for achieving certain higher political ends (lower taxes, higher taxes, welfare reform, free trade, tariffs, and so on) but not to lobby for a specific piece of legislation nor endorse any candidate nor participate directly in a political campaign."

Newt states on pages 122-123 that the House Ethics Committee did not conclude that Newt violated tax law, but that it "felt that [Newt] could have avoided public controversy had [he] sought and followed legal advice to ensure [his] activities with the nonprofit agency that transmitted and disseminated the Renewing American Civilization course complied with tax law."  But Newt says on page 107 that he actually was advised by a lawyer, who was once on the Federal Elections Commission staff, and that he was "scrupulous about sticking to the rules."

The New York Times' understanding of the committee's conclusion is partially different from Newt's, for it says here, while linking to the report: "But the ethics committee did find that Mr. Gingrich had used tax-exempt money to promote Republican goals, and given the panel inaccurate information for its inquiry."  I say "partially" because Newt does acknowledge that he gave the panel inaccurate information: he states that his lawyers prepared a poorly-researched report, and that he signed it without reading it thoroughly.  Why did Newt agree to be reprimanded and to pay a $300,ooo fee to reimburse the committee for its work, if he felt that he was innocent of tax violations?  Newt says that he wanted to put the issue behind him for the sake of the country rather than dragging it out for years.  Newt was also dealing with the death of his step-father at this time.

2.  Newt talks about the census, and how he opposed a Democratic attempt to sample ten percent of the population rather than counting it.  What does this mean?  There was concern that the way of doing the census----a door-to-door head count----under-counted poorer neighborhoods, minorities, immigrants, etc.  This was relevant to the representation that areas got in government, and also to the amount of money that they received from the federal government.  To attempt to redress this problem, the Democrats proposed that the Census Bureau count 90 per cent of the population, while allowing for the remaining 10 per cent to be defined according to sampling.  This is called "statistical adjustment".  Newt acknowledges that there is a problem of under-representation of certain people in the census (although he notes that the 1990 census counted 98.6 of Americans, which isn't bad for the government), but he did not think that the Democrats' approach was the way to go.  He refers to it as inventing virtual people, and he feels that it could unfairly tip the balance in certain elections.  

Incidentally, there was a West Wing episode about this issue.  See here for a summary.  On the show, Sam Seaborn says that a reason that people in the inner-cities are not adequately counted is that many of them don't like to talk to people, such as the counters going door-to-door.

Newt Gingrich's Lessons Learned the Hard Way 4

I have four items for my write-up today on Newt Gingrich's 1998 book, Lessons Learned the Hard Way.

1.  Newt Gingrich says that, as Speaker, he was under pressure from conservatives in the private sector not to compromise or work with President Bill Clinton, and he was criticized for being too accommodationist.  But Newt narrates that Bill Clinton saw the "handwriting on the country's wall" and signed major Republican bills with "only a few adjustments" (page 82).  There was even a time when Clinton agreed with the Republicans against the Democrats.  Clinton wanted fast track legislation that would allow him to speedily make trade agreements, but Democrats did not support him on this because their union backers opposed giving the President such fast-track authority, presumably because they felt that it could threaten American jobs.  Clinton liked the Republicans' version of fast-track legislation, Newt narrates, but there were not enough Democrats supporting it for it to pass.

2.  There are two chapters in this book about ethics, covering Newt's crusade as a Congressman against ethical violations by Democratic (and one Republican) U.S. representatives, and the ethical charges against Newt when he was a Congressman and then Speaker of the House.  I have not read all of the second chapter on ethics (the chapter on GOPAC and the class Newt was teaching), and so I may save my commentary on that for tomorrow.  What I'd like to do here is to highlight something from a New York Times' article on Newt's crusade against ethical violations.  The article is entitled Gingrich Stuck to Caustic Path in Ethics Battles, and it says the following:

"Mr. Gingrich spent more than a year making speeches against Mr. Wright, branding him 'the least ethical speaker of the 20th century.' The charge that finally stuck involved a vanity book, 'Reflections of a Public Man,' that Mr. Wright sold in bulk to lobbyists and supporters, under an unusual agreement for him to receive 55% of the royalties. (Years later, Mr. Gingrich would come under attack for his own book deal.)

"The House Ethics Committee found 'reason to believe' that Mr. Wright had violated House rules in 69 instances; seeking to avoid a drawn out disciplinary hearing, he resigned in June 1989, giving Mr. Gingrich his biggest Democratic scalp."

The article presents Newt as fishing for anything he could pin on Wright, even making charges that did not stick, yet it acknowledges that the House Ethics Committee found reason to believe that Jim Wright violated House rules 69 times.  Does that not confirm that Newt was on to something?  I guess it depends on which of Newt's charges were verified.  Of course, Newt in the book says that his case against Wright was based on solid research.

3.  Newt challenged an African-American Democrat over ethical violations, and there was a danger that this could be characterized as racism.  But Newt states on page 87: "But as a Pennsylvania-born army brat who had on my very first day in office cosponsored the bill making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday, I was quite serene about my ability to draw a clear distinction between a felon and a nonfelon without regard to race."

I read in an article on Newt (which, unfortunately, I cannot find) that Newt, for a Southern Republican, was actually quite progressive on race.  I admire that.

4.  Newt had issues with convicted felons being allowed to vote in the House.  On page 87, he states: "I began to make speeches about the indecency of permitting someone who had in fact been convicted of a crime to vote on measures affecting the welfare of ordinary Americans.  Imagine, I said, allowing the vote of an honest legislator to be canceled out by the vote of a felon."

I've heard people make this sort of argument in favor of withholding the right to vote from felons.  Arnold Vinick made that sort of argument on The West Wing!  I don't understand it, to be honest.  Why shouldn't people who have made serious mistakes be allowed to vote?  They have to live under the decisions that elected representatives make, just like the rest of us, so shouldn't they be allowed some say?  Moreover, shouldn't they have some say so that the rights of the accused are protected, or so that "law and order" does not go too far and become unfairly repressive?  I suppose that there could then be a danger that some felons would support laws that allow corruption or loosen up regulations, but my impression is that the laws against felons voting do not relate to that so much.  Those kinds of people can have political influence without voting.  My impression is that the felons stripped of their right to vote are largely lower on the income scale.

Newt Gingrich's Lessons Learned the Hard Way 3

I have four items for my write-up today on Newt Gingrich's 1998 book, Lessons Learned the Hard Way.

1.  Newt talks about how he and several House Republicans sought to block a measure to cut Medicare premiums, since Medicare needed those premiums to keep up with the rising cost of health care; otherwise, Medicare would go bankrupt.  Newt states on page 51 that the attempt to freeze premiums "would give the President [Bill Clinton] the opportunity to sound the old class warfare theme of the Republicans' plans to offer tax cuts to the rich while blocking premium cuts for the poor."

I can appreciate the idea that people need to pay into a system to keep it solvent.  My problem is that Republicans largely seem to have this sort of attitude when the people paying into the system in question are middle income.  When it comes to upper income people, however, they sing a different tune, for they promote tax cuts.  But I cannot speak in absolutes here, for there are times when Republicans support cutting taxes that hurt the poor and the middle class, such as the gasoline tax, or the tax on cigarettes and alcohol. 

2.  One error that Newt Gingrich thinks he and the House Republicans made was to underestimate Bill Clinton.  I enjoyed what Newt said on pages 55-56:

"People feeling confident of their own strength often fail to take the proper measure of their opponents.  That was certainly the case with us and the President.  Had we done our homework about this man, especially about his career in Arkansas, we would never have been quite so confident of our ability to push him into signing our legislation into law.  This was a man who had lost a congressional race, bounced back to become Arkansas attorney general, been elected the youngest governor in the country, failed to win reelection, then became governor again for four terms.  Next he ran for President against an incumbent George Bush, who, coming off a very popular war, for a time had very high approval ratings.  Though in the early summer of 1992 he was running third in the polls behind Bush and Ross Perot, he survived both the revelation that he had dodged the draft and what a member of his campaign team had unforgettably dubbed 'bimbo eruptions' and gone on to win the presidency.  To underestimate such a politician is a serious error, and it is, I am afraid, an error we committed in 1995-96."

3.  Newt made an interesting point about Democrats in the House of Representatives who became Republicans.  According to Newt, they're usually shocked because, whereas the Democrats are cohesive and encourage a great deal of group-think within their own ranks, the Republicans are more independently-minded.  Newt speculates that this is because many Republicans were entrepreneurs, who are quite independent.  My impression is that the Republican Party in the House and Senate became more cohesive with time, for I've heard about Tom Delay's tough party discipline, and how Republicans were pressured to vote for the prescription drug bill.

4.  Newt talks about how the Washington establishment equates departure from conservatism as "growth".  This sort of attitude annoys me, too.  But I see it on both sides.  How many conservatives have presented liberalism as immature, youthful idealism that people will outgrow once they try to earn a living and have to pay taxes?  Many conservatives quote Winston Churchill's remark that, if you reach a certain age and are still a liberal, you must not have a brain.

But, in a sense, I can identify with both sides on this.  I think that there is idealism and realism, maturity and immaturity, on both sides.  Conservatives are realistic about how taxes and regulations are a burden on people, and also about the inefficiencies of government bureaucracies.  But they are overly idealistic in that they expect for tax cuts to create an economic Garden of Eden.  Liberals often (not always, but often) tend to turn a blind eye to government inefficiency, but they are more aware of the problems that lower and middle income people face, in terms of health care, the decline of the American dream, etc.

Newt Gingrich's Lessons Learned the Hard Way 2

In my latest reading of Newt Gingrich's 1998 book, Lessons Learned the Hard Way, Newt talks about juicy things, such as the time that he had to exit from the back of Air Force One during the Clinton years, and Connie Chung.  But I won't talk about those things in this post.  You can buy the book for that!  Rather, I'd like to use as my starting-point something that Newt says on page 40:

"[People] need something else as well, especially from us [conservative politicians].  They need to believe that we understand how people feel.  This is sometimes an uncomfortable thing for Republicans to make convincing.  Often we tend to talk as if we are a group of managers analyzing some problem in a boardroom.  Democrats, on the other hand, whatever their shortcomings, have a passion for both power and people and instinctively know how to focus in on both.  You might say that they on the whole come on like a party of lawyers making an appeal to a blue-collar jury, while Republicans come on like a party of managers making an appeal to a board of directors.  Guess who is more successful at mass communication?"

What Newt thinks that conservative politicians should do is to bring in living, breathing people to testify about the impact of policies on their own lives.  As examples, Newt refers to the time that House Republicans invited a sick girl to testify that life-saving medicine was being endangered by trial lawyers, and the time when they invited a welfare mother from Cleveland who was happy that her child could attend a good school due to Governor George Voinovich's school choice program.

I agree with Newt that, overall, Democrats are better than Republicans at putting a human face on policy discussions.  Years ago, I had a discussion with Michael Westmoreland-White about how the Democrats were doing this in the debate over S-CHIP (see here).

I think that we should look at the big picture, but also that we should remember how policies impact real people.  Newt talks about this issue when he says that relatives outside of Washington convinced him to oppose a gasoline tax that President George H.W. Bush was proposing, for the tax would have a deleterious impact on people, such as retirees who liked to drive.

Newt Gingrich's Lessons Learned the Hard Way 1

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.