Newt Gingrich

Newton Leroy Gingrich (born June 17, 1943) is an American politician who is best-known as the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. In 1995 he was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year.

He was born Newton McPherson in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the son of Kathleen and Newton McPherson. His parents separated soon after Newt's birth, and her mother raised him by herself until she married Robert Gingrich, who adopted Newt, hence the name change.

Gingrich's adopted surname has been generally pronounced "Ging-gritch" since his entry into public life. However, his adoptive family has always pronounced the name "Gin-grick," as would be customary in the Pennsylvania Dutch ethnic milieu.

Education

Gingrich attended school at various military installations and graduated from Baker High School, Columbus, Georgia, in 1961. He received a bachelor's degree from Emory University in Atlanta in 1965. He received a master's degree from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1968 and a doctor of philosophy degree from the same university in 1971. He taught history at West Georgia College in Carrollton, Georgia, from 1970 to 1978.

Political career

After two failed runs for Congress in 1974 and 1976 in which Gingrich was defeated by Democrat Jack Flynt, who had served twenty years as the Georgia 6th District Representative, Gingrich was elected as a Republican to the House of Representatives in November 1978. In this election, after Flynt's retirement, Gingrich faced Democrat Virginia Shapard, a Georgia State Senator. Gingrich went on to serve ten terms in Congress and became a national leader of the conservative Republican movement while engendering notable political and personal criticism from his opponents; his detractors have accused him of contributing to political polarization.

In 1981 Gingrich was a cofounder of both the Congressional Military Reform Caucus and the Congressional Space Caucus. In 1983 he founded the Conservative Opportunity Society, a group that included young conservative House Republicans. In 1983, Gingrich demanded the expulsion of fellow representatives Dan Crane and Gerry Studds for their roles in the Congressional Page sex scandal.

In 1987 Gingrich brought ethics charges against Speaker of the House Jim Wright, a Democrat, who eventually resigned as a result of the Congressional ethics inquiry. Gingrich's success was in part responsible for his rising influence in the Republican caucus, and in 1989 he served as minority whip, succeeding Representative Dick Cheney, who had been appointed Secretary of Defense by President George H. W. Bush. Gingrich served as Minority Whip until the election of 1994, the first midterm election during the Presidency of Bill Clinton.

In 1994, Gingrich defined a Contract with America, a list of campaign promises signed by himself and other Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. The promises were designed to unite the various factions of the party and provide a contrast with the policies of the Democratic Party. Many credit that contract (as well as demographic trends) for the election successes of November 1994. In that election, Republicans gained 52 seats and took control of the House for the first time since 1954.

Gingrich was then elected Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and served from 1995 to 1998. The Congress fulfilled Gingrich's Contract, voting on all ten of the Contract's issues within the first 100 days of the session. Legislation proposed by the 104th Congress included term limits for Congressional Representatives, tax cuts, welfare reform, and a balanced budget law, as well as independent financial auditing of the finances of the House of Representatives and elimination of non-essential services such as the House barbershop and shoe shine concessions.

While many of the major proposals did not become law, after defeat or modification in the Senate or President Clinton's veto, they represented a dramatic change in the legislative goals and priorities of previous Congresses and in general promoted Gingrich's conservative philosophy of limited government.

Over the next four years, Gingrich's leadership also took aim at the embattled president, investigating various scandals and calling for impeachment of President Clinton.

In January of 1997, the full House (by a 395-28 vote) reprimanded Gingrich and fined him $300,000. The sanctions were for "intentional or ... reckless" disregard of House rules by using tax-exempt foundations for political purposes and subsequently lying to the House ethics committee.

After the 1998 election campaign, in which the Republicans expected big gains but ultimately showed the poorest results in 34 years of any party not in control of the White House, Gingrich resigned from the speakership and from his seat in November 1998.

Many critics of Gingrich has noted that while his party hammered President Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal, that Gingrich himself had a history of what many would consider bad personal conduct. In 1981 Gingrich reportedly informed his first wife, Jackie Battley, that he wanted a divorce just as she had received a diagnosis of cancer. Gingrich and Marianne Ginther were married months later.

Also, during the very time of the Lewinsky scandal, Gingrich was having an extramarital sexual affair with Callista Bisek, a scheduling and assistant hearing clerk on his staff who is 23 years his junior. The affair reportedly began well before Gingrich assumed the speakership in 1994, and continued through his divorce from his wife, Marianne Ginther Gingrich, in 1999. Reportedly, Gingrich's fellow Republicans knew he was engaged in the extramarital relationship and used that knowledge to ease him out of the speakership.

According to the Washington Post, in late 1999, Gingrich reportedly telephoned Marianne in Ohio during Marianne's mother's birthday party to inform her that he "didn't want [her] as his wife any more."

Post-speakership career

Gingrich was often touted as a possible presidential candidate in the 2000 Presidential election, but this never materialized.

He has since remained involved in national politics and public policy debate. He is a senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, focusing on health care (he has founded the Center for Health Transformation), information technology, the military, and politics. He is occasionally a guest or panel member on Inside-the-Beltway news shows. Gingrich has publicly questioned the decisions and motivations for some of the policies, particularly foreign policies, of the Bush Administration. Specifically, he has challenged policy of the State Department, calling for a transformation of the department due to numerous diplomatic failures. He has also called the State Department "ineffective and incoherent" in its resolve to persuade members of the UN Security Council for a second resolution for military action against Iraq.

In early December 2003, Gingrich, although generally supportive of the Bush Administration, took issue with the administration's strategy in Iraq, stating that the U.S. had "gone off the cliff in Iraq" and that "Americans can't win in Iraq. Only Iraqis can win in Iraq." Despite this, he remained broadly supportive of President Bush's re-election campaign.

Gingrich has also been co-author with science fiction author William Forstchen, of three alternate history novels: 1945 (in which World War II never happened), Gettysburg : A Novel of the Civil War (in which the Confederacy won the Battle of Gettysburg) and Grant Comes East, a sequel to Gettysburg.

Quotes

• "Politics and war are remarkably similar situations."
• "The Democrats in the Capitol building get up every morning knowing that to survive they need to do only two things: They lie regularly and they cheat."
• "In government, you either have a system where you say 'Would you like to learn how to be rich, would you like to learn how to be successful?' Or you have a system where you say, 'Well, you really ought to feel envy and resentment, so let's see if we can mug them.'"

Sources and external links

• Newt.org (http://newt.org/), the official home page of Gingrich
• Congressional Biographical Directory (http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=G000225)
• Various BBC and CNN news reports from 1998
• Transforming the State Department (http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.16992,filter./news_detail.asp)
• Book reviews by Gingrich (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-glance/-/A27WFYW9ZJ5DN1/) on Amazon.com