Burning Down the House

by Julian E. Zelizer

  Wright, the son of a populist Democrat, viewed politics through the lens of 1955, the year that he arrived in Washington. Filled with grandiose ambitions, the Texan joined a Democratic establishment that had been shaped by President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal. For Wright, politics was about legislating effectively and about members keeping their districts happy, whether by helping constituents with federal agencies or by directing federal largesse toward local businesses to create jobs for the electorate. That had been a winning formula for decades, one that propelled Wright to reelection again and again. Even after Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980, Wright and the House Democrats were still in the saddle.

  But when he was elected Speaker, Wright didn’t comprehend how profoundly Vietnam and Watergate had shattered trust in government and destabilized the leaders of both parties. The war and the scandal produced sweeping reforms that changed the way Congress worked: leaders were more vulnerable, the process was more open, and every member had to abide by stricter rules of behavior. The old rules of governing no longer applied. Wright didn’t see that the people in Washington had changed too. The investigative journalists, the good-government reformers, the special prosecutors, the renegade legislators—they were as much a part of the establishment as the party leaders and the cigar-chomping lobbyists. And these ragtag upstarts could make or break a career and, as it turned out, damage an entire political party in the process.

  By the time he launched his crusade against the Speaker in 1987, Gingrich had come to understand that in the modern media era politics was as much about perception as substance. The way journalists framed a story and the narratives they crafted about an issue could be as powerful as the facts. From the first day he set foot on the floor of the House in 1979, Gingrich had been peddling a tale about the illegitimacy of the Democratic majority, and he found that he was not alone within his party; after Wright’s first day as Speaker in January 1987, Gingrich made the villain of that tale the corrupt Texan now leading the House Democrats.

  Gingrich’s House colleagues—an earlier, less brazen brand of Republicans—might not have understood that the way a politician spun a story often determined the outcome of a struggle. But Gingrich did. As an erstwhile historian at a west Georgia college, with a Ph.D. from Tulane University, he knew that good storytelling mattered. Gingrich would throw out an argument or an accusation, let an idea circulate in the media ecosystem, and when his critics pounced, he would turn their words against them. For Gingrich, the central battle was shaping the way voters conceived of the basic problem at hand. First Gingrich made Wright the embodiment of the House’s ills; then Gingrich drove him to resign; then Gingrich took his majority and his gavel.

  When the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, Gingrich would emerge as their leader, the avatar of a new generation of Republicans who were more aggressive, more partisan, and less restrained by traditional norms. Before Wright stepped down, the Speaker warned his colleagues to avoid the “mindless cannibalism” that the intensification of partisan warfare would bring. He was too late. Drawn to power, emboldened by success, the Republican Party embraced Gingrich’s politics. Most of the GOP acted as though the destruction of Speaker Wright proved that shattering the rules of an institution could be an effective way to seize political power. Gingrich’s generation, in turn, would spawn their own successors with the Tea Party in 2010.

  These Young Turks, who won their seats in a backlash against President Barack Obama, were willing to do whatever was necessary to win. When Republicans threatened to trigger a global economic meltdown by sending the U.S. government into default over a spending dispute with President Obama, the Utah representative Jason Chaffetz told reporters that he realized that his leadership’s willingness “to let a default happen” was “a negotiating chip, and said he didn’t mind at all.”5 Tea Party Republicans thrived in a partisan universe that revolved around Roger Ailes’s media empire; Fox News played to a zealous crowd of voters who rarely bucked the party line.

  In the end, Trump decided that two pirates were indeed too much for one ticket. He considered having Gingrich as his running mate but concluded that Governor Pence brought more to the ticket. Pence had been Manafort’s strong preference, as he feared that Gingrich would be too much of a distraction.6 Unlike Gingrich, Pence would serve as a bridge between his campaign and evangelical voters who were distrustful of the thrice-married, testosterone-filled reality television star. Pence was a good-looking, media-savvy, disciplined politician, one who would not steal the spotlight away from his attention-seeking boss.

  Gingrich could live with Trump’s decision. He had come to believe that Trump was a transformative figure, and he didn’t want to do anything to get in his way. He could take pride in watching the 2016 presidential election, which confirmed that his political style and Republican politics had become one.

  On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, Gingrich was downright giddy, exuding the same sense of excitement as a young boy entering a stadium to see his favorite sports team. At 10:18 A.M., Gingrich strode into the capital with his fellow former Speaker John Boehner, who was boasting to colleagues that he was “texting buddies” with the president-elect. With his wife, Callista, by his side, Gingrich walked through the crowd, stopping to schmooze with some of the Republican Party’s stars, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who was photographed attentively listening to the Georgian. Wearing a dark overcoat, Gingrich appeared to thoroughly enjoy playing the role of senior statesman. The atmosphere reminded him of the day when Ronald Reagan took the oath of office thirty-six years earlier. Trump, now America’s forty-fifth president, delivered a bleak inaugural address on the west front of the Capitol, sketching a portrait of a nation in crisis and vowing, “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” Gingrich loved it. He called the speech “decisive and impressive—delivered slowly, firmly and with conviction. . . . It was exactly the message Americans needed to hear.”7

  Although Gingrich did not become part of Trump’s cabinet, the former Speaker emerged as one of the president’s chief supporters in the media—in some ways, the forum Gingrich had long felt was most meaningful. Gingrich had been playing to the television cameras for his entire career, and he would now devote his energy to “developing the agenda, pushing the agenda, explaining the agenda.”8 As Trump took the helm, Gingrich appeared frequently on conservative television and radio programs to pontificate about why the liberal establishment had it all wrong about this maverick president. He even published Understanding Trump, a vigorous treatise explaining why Trump was a historic figure. “It is astonishing to me, as a historian,” Gingrich wrote, “how the elite media and much of the political establishment refuse to try to understand Donald Trump. They have been so rabidly opposed to him, so ideologically committed to left-wing values, and so terrified of the future that they haven’t stopped and considered how extraordinary his success has been. President Trump is one of the most remarkable individuals to ever occupy the White House.”9

  Gingrich had planted; Trump had reaped. The rise of Gingrich’s merciless version of the Republican Party was inextricably linked to the fall of Speaker Wright. Gingrich perfected his new style of partisan politics through the successful crusade against the powerful Texan. In the process, he elevated himself from the backbench to the party leadership. He persuaded a growing number of Republicans to embrace his raucous ways, by weaponizing ethics rules and manipulating well-meaning journalists. Slowly but surely, starting right after Ronald Reagan left office, the Grand Old Party started to look more and more like Newt.

  The cataclysmic political battle between Wright and Gingrich had been an epic struggle between the old Washington and the new, and the new Washington would prevail. The new Washington was rougher, less stable, and far more ruthless. In the new Washington, almost anything was permissible. In partisan politics, it was almost impossible to go too far. We can date precisely the moment when our
toxic political environment was born: Speaker Wright’s downfall in 1989.10

  One

  THE MAKING OF A RENEGADE REPUBLICAN

  When Newt Gingrich arrived on Capitol Hill in January 1979 to begin his first term as a U.S. representative from Georgia, he still saw himself as an outsider. The supremely confident Gingrich, who liked to describe himself as a “Pennsylvania-born army brat,” had a love-hate relationship with authority figures. Whether it was dating an older woman—his high school teacher—despite his stepfather’s admonition against doing so or applying to be the president of a college just a few months after joining as a junior faculty member, Gingrich had never been deferential to any of the bosses in his life. His favorite film in the late 1970s was Animal House, a raucous comedy about a fraternity of misfits who made life impossible for the dean.1

  Although he didn’t like the people in charge, he thirsted for the power that they unjustly held. As a teenager, Gingrich explained to a teacher that he planned to move to Georgia when he was older to create a Republican Party. It didn’t concern him that some Republicans already lived in the Peach State; he would do it better. On this and most issues, Gingrich tended to believe in the essential rightness of his views and was often unable to even hear what his opponents were saying. Extraordinarily arrogant, totally self-absorbed, and brutally ruthless, he rarely allowed anything or anyone to stand in his way. He arrived in Washington at the end of his fellow Georgian Jimmy Carter’s troubled presidency determined to tear everything down.

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  A tough upbringing shaped Gingrich’s demeanor. He grew up in a home that lacked much compassion. His parents, Kathleen “Kit” Daugherty and “Big” Newton McPherson Jr., separated just months after he was born on June 17, 1943, in Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania. The couple had met at a roller-skating rink, a working-class hangout where teenagers congregated to flirt and mingle. Kit instantly found herself attracted to the charismatic Newton. But the initial excitement wore off as she discovered that the hulking, six-foot-three Newton was an alcoholic with a penchant for loitering at bars, playing pool, and gambling. In short order, his drinking habits deteriorated. Bar fights were a regular occurrence. He became physically intimidating and even abusive to her during his binges.

  Still, Kit said yes when he proposed, hoping that marriage would mature him and make him take more responsibility for his behavior. It proved difficult for her to live with that rationalization for long. Before the wedding, Kit (only sixteen years old) got cold feet as his long nights at the bars increased. Kit told her mother that she didn’t want to marry Newton. But her mother, a widow who had enjoyed a wonderful marriage, pressured her into going through with the wedding, reminding her daughter that the announcement was all set to run in the local newspaper, so it would be embarrassing to the family if she pulled out at the last minute.

  The union only lasted three days. Kit walked out on her husband after he assaulted her for waking him up from a drunken stupor. Rather than reform his ways, Newton decided to join the navy during World War II. Within a few weeks, Kit learned that she was pregnant. Their son, whom she named Newton Leroy (Newt for short), was born in June. Her husband returned from the war on a temporary leave in August only to formally begin the divorce process. Kit moved back in with her mother to save money.

  With no father at home and with his mother working at a local factory on wartime production, Newt depended on his extended family for nurturing during the war years. His grandmother, aunts, and uncles—all of whom lived in the working-class, Republican town of Hummelstown, just east of Harrisburg and on the way to Hershey—tried to offer Newt the parental support that he otherwise lacked. The small, picturesque community, founded before the American Revolution, was largely populated by government workers who commuted to Harrisburg and employees of the Hershey chocolate plant. From a young age, Newt was encouraged by his family to find solace in reading and study; his grandmother, a teacher, instilled a strong commitment to education in her children and grandchildren, even though many of their family members were blue-collar workers who had not attended college.

  Three years after her divorce, Kit Daugherty married an army lieutenant colonel named Robert “Gus” Gingrich, who was studying biology at Gettysburg College. He was on temporary leave from the military while recovering from a hernia. Robert was willing to raise Newt as his own but offered his young stepson scant warmth.

  Robert, who liked to wear his lieutenant colonel uniform to his high school reunions in Hummelstown, also had a hardscrabble beginning. He was abandoned by his unwed teenage mother and grew up as a foster child until a family adopted him at age sixteen. Robert concluded that children needed to become self-sufficient and steely. He thought that Newt’s grandmother had been too doting and that the boy needed to toughen up. Newt and his sisters—Susan, born in 1948, and Roberta, born in 1951—feared their father’s temper and intolerance of anyone who broke the rules. Newt grew up thinking that Robert was his biological father, but hugs, fishing, playing catch, and other gestures of paternal affection were few. “He can go a whole day and say only fifty words,” Gingrich’s mother said.2 Newt usually felt alone in his home, finding comfort in his extensive collection of snakes and books about zoology.

  The end of World War II didn’t make things much easier for the Gingrich family. They were not among the millions of veteran families that found prosperous lives in the growing suburbs of 1950s America. Between the ages of three and eleven, Gingrich lived in a modest apartment in Hummelstown, on top of a fumy gas station. He shared a room with his grandmother, who kept one eye open for much of the night because she was terrified of his many jars of snakes. (He named one of the reptiles “Oscar Aloysius Stinky III.”)

  The dinner table was always lively at the Gingrich home, albeit with clear rules. Newt’s father would go around the table to grill each child about what they had learned in school that day. None of the kids dared challenge their father. “Dad was the ruler of the house,” Gingrich’s sister Susan recalled.3

  Once the Korean War started, Robert was again called on to serve. Kit found herself working hard to raise the kids even as she continued to struggle with depression. The kids spent as much time taking care of her as she did them.

  Newt and his sisters learned to fend for themselves.4 “I was a 50-year-old at 9,” Gingrich recalled.5 At age eleven, telling his mom that he was going to the library, Newt bought a bus ticket to Harrisburg to see two documentaries about African wildlife. He was enchanted by the films and left the theater wondering why Harrisburg didn’t have its own zoo. As he walked onto the street, Newt noticed a sign pointing to city hall. Instead of heading back toward the bus, an inspired Gingrich walked directly over to the government building. The receptionist, amused to hear a young boy so earnestly asking her about why the city didn’t have a zoo, sent him upstairs to meet with the assistant director of parks and recreation. The two had a serious conversation, reviewing old files, budgets, and well-worn maps. The civil servant explained to Gingrich that if he wanted to pursue the idea further, he needed to return the following week to make his case directly to the city council. He ordered a cab to drive Gingrich home, handing him a thick book of laws and regulations as a souvenir for his efforts. Gingrich returned dutifully the next Tuesday and waited his turn to address the council. The zoo did not get built, but Paul Walker, the editor of a city newspaper, the Harrisburg Home Star, was so captivated by watching this neatly dressed, polite young boy make his case to a roomful of government officials (which was much more interesting to him than the other matters on the agenda, namely garbage collection) that he published a story about the curious incident.6 “An 11-year-old is fighting in City Hall here in an attempt to establish a zoo in the city’s Wildwood Park,” Walker wrote, in an article titled AMBITIOUS ZOO KEEPER which was picked up by the Associated Press. “Young Newton Gingrich told Mayor Claude Robins and four city Councilmen that he an
d a number of youthful buddies could round up enough animals to get the project started if granted use of the park.”7 Walker also allowed Gingrich to write an article that appeared on the front page of the local giveaway paper, about why Harrisburg needed a zoo.8

  Not everything about Gingrich was serious. He loved to memorize comedy routines from television stars such as Red Skelton and Dick Van Dyke. He also had a mischievous side. His favorite prank was to pretend that his friend Dennis Yantz had beaten him up on the sidewalk. When someone pulled over to see if he was okay, Gingrich would push Yantz aside, jump up, and yell, “Surprise!” He would laugh in delight as he watched the startled stranger jump back.9 One of Newt’s go-to places in Harrisburg was the movie theater, where he especially enjoyed classic Westerns and war films on the big screen. Newt loved to watch his movie heroes, including John Wayne, track down and kill the bad guys, no matter how powerful they were.

  Newt had an insatiable appetite for learning and new ideas. Following his father’s service in the Korean War, the family moved to Fort Riley in Kansas. Newt instantly stood out in the classroom. He expanded his early interest in zoology, obsessively studying different species and endlessly talking about them with his teachers and classmates. “Newtie,” as his mother called him, fed his snakes hard-boiled eggs as she looked on apprehensively. At Fort Riley, he had the opportunity to spend time with Lucius Clay, the famed U.S. colonel who had administered occupied Germany after World War II, who now schooled the precocious boy in international relations and the art of war. According to one biographer, Newt could stand in a roomful of parents and feel totally at ease, without the nerdy awkwardness he displayed around other kids.

  In 1956, when Newt was thirteen, the family moved again, when the military stationed Robert Gingrich in France. The entire family packed up and moved with him. His father purchased an expensive set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which Newt treasured, devouring every entry. But his relationship with his father remained icy. When the fifteen-year-old Newt and a friend stayed out late one night, breaking his father’s 11:00 P.M. curfew rule, Robert snatched his son up by the shirt and pinned him to the wall. After a few seconds, the father let go, dropping the teen to the ground; without looking back, he walked away, confident that his son would never repeat the mistake again.10