Ep. 47 – How Newt Gingrich Created Donald Trump: A Conversation with Julian E. Zelizer

[0:00:07 Peniel] Welcome to race and democracy, a podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice, and citizenship. 

[0:00:21 Peniel] On today’s podcast, we’re pleased to be joined by Dr. Julian Zelizer, who is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes Class of 1941 professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and a fellow at New America. He is the author and editor of numerous books that examine US political leaders, policies and institutions since the New Deal. His most recent books include Jimmy Carter, Arsenal of Democracy and Governing America. The revival of political History in his latest book, Hot Off the Presses is burning Down the House. Newt Gingrich, The Fall of the Speaker and the Rise of the New Republican Party. And he is also a weekly columnist for CNN.com. Julian Zelizer. Welcome to Race and Democracy.

[0:01:11 Julian] Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be with you. 

[0:01:14 Peniel] Well, let’s get right to it. This is a fascinating book, really, the first full length book that I’ve ever read about former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Um, and it really makes a provocative argument that when we think about the contemporary modern Republican Party and really, the hyper partisanship that we have in Washington, D. C. Today in 2020 it can be dated back to the rise of Newt Gingrich, who goes from being sort of this obscure former professor from Georgia. Was a backbencher in the Republican House of Representatives to really becoming this this massively important, this major not necessarily legislator, but this major ideological, um, underpin er of the entire apparatus of the GOP. So I want us to go to burning down the house. Um, you know who is Newt Gingrich? And really, why’s that battle with former Democratic speaker of the House gym right? So important to the way in which our political culture and world is being shaped now?

[0:02:22 Julian] Well, I I really wanted to understand how the Republican Party came to be the way that it is. Even before President Trump you saw everything in the Trump playbook was already being played out certainly on Capitol Hill, and I wanted to understand when did the party become that way and and I knew enough about Newt Gingrich on the way he approached politics. Toe have a sense. He’s really the pivotal figure, and I argue he comes into Congress. He wins election from district in Georgia in 1978. And he’s one of the young Republicans who are trying to make a name for the party in the South. And they were familiar with the Republican Party that was absolutely powerless on Capitol Hill since 1954. And and Gingrich believed that for Republicans to win for Republicans to finally achieve power in Congress, they would basically have to be willing to do absolutely anything and that partisanship had to be the priority and that they would practice a kind of partisanship where all the guard rails were abandoned, where you could say anything, you could do anything to the institutions of government, Uh, and you could really threaten the ability of Washington to function at all in pursuit of partisan power. And my book traces him before he speaker when he is. As you said, this kind of a little bit of an oddball ah, history professor turned politician, but also someone who’s seen even by some Republicans is quite toxic in terms of what he was willing to do Onda Story ends in 1989 because his first major political accomplishment is to bring down the speaker of the House, Jim Wright, from Texas, which was the first time a speaker resigns in American history through attacks about his ethics. And because of that, Newt Gingrich is made part of the Republican leadership. He’s voted in as House minority whip. And so you see this new Republican as a move from being part of the backbench to part of the leadership. And because he brings down Speaker Jim Wright, many Republicans say, Well, we might not like Newt Gingrich, but there’s something to what he’s doing, and we’re going to sign on to this kind of smash mouth partisanship as the party

[0:04:43 Peniel] norm. Now, I thought one of the most fascinating parts of the book early on is what happens to Congressman Charles Digs because those of us who study African American history and civil rights Charles Digs is a major figure congressman from Michigan who was there at Emmett Till’s the trial of Emmett Till’s killers in 1955 who did so much to support African decolonization and political self determination in Africa and anti apartheid activists. But Gingrich plays a real role in the really unseemly demise of Congressman digs his career. You document that And why is that so, So important?

[0:05:27 Julian] Yeah. So Gingrich, one of his, uh, strategies that’s very clear even the first time he runs for the house in 1974 and loses is that the major argument he wants to make is not focusing on liberal-conservative, right-left. But to take the atmosphere after Watergate and after Vietnam, uh, distrust in government and to turn it against Democrats rather than just Republican than his rhetoric is all about bringing down the establishment and how Democrats are just a corrupt force in Washington. And they basically do anything and violate all rules. And and that’s why they were powerful. When he comes into office. Congressman Digs is already has been charged with taking kickbacks from staff so he’s in the middle already of unethical problem. He’s convicted in October of 1978 which is a month before Gingrich comes into office. And then Gingrich comes into office and in 1979 while Congress is really the house is trying to figure out what kind of what what happened with digs and what to do. Gingrich leads the charge, and he sees and digs someone who he can make an example right away of the ethical problems that he argues shape the Democratic Party. And there’s tension. There are some Republicans who say privately this is a bad idea because Gingrich will fall right away into the image of a Southern politician going after a leading African American legislator. Gingrich doesn’t really care, and he says he and he still to this day will always say he’s not a racist and hey goes after white politicians as well. It’s about the ethics, Um, but it’s a big deal when he goes after Diggs, who you know, is censured by the House in July 1979 and would resign in June because Gingrich was a young upstart. He didn’t have power. He wasn’t even a Democrat. Usually, these issues were handled by the party of the member who’s in trouble. But he makes a name for himself going after dicks and when digs censured in this really powerful moment has brought to the front of the well of the House and his formally censured it’s seen among Republicans is the first time this Newt Gingrich had really come to the forefront. And so, through digs, he makes his first effort to connect ethics to the Democrats on Obviously, uh, in this case, the issue of race is front and center.

[0:08:12 Peniel] I think one of the things your book does really, really well is show in burning down the house the way the post-Watergate efforts to have ethical reform uh, really backfire. You know, you think about the post Watergate babies who are there, um, Democrats who, in a way, we’re trying to transform congressional ethics. But Republicans really led by Gingrich, are really able to turn the tables on them in ways that are truly ironic, especially considering the fact that you document Newt Gingrich’s own ethical lapses That seem to for the most part, he seems to evade those on the media seems to be enthralled by him throughout the 19 eighties and nineties.

[0:09:01 Julian] That’s right. After Watergate, you have this moment in American politics, where Democrats certainly, and some Republicans were trying to figure out, you know, what’s even possible. Can you remake the institutions of government so that politicians were held accountable that people once again have faith in government? And there’s all sorts of reforms and ethics reforms or ah, major one where there’s new rules basically put in in the House and Senate in terms of what a member can or can’t do. For example, they say, members of Congress earn money speaking to different groups. And so they put a limit on how much are you allowed to earn so that it’s not unending and that some of those kind of bad temptations go away? But Gingrich quickly saw, almost instinctively saw that those could be weaponized. And you really didn’t care about the actual ethical issues. And that was clear, as you said, from his own life, even as he’s pursuing gym right about ethics, he himself is under investigation for ethics on the same exact charges. He’s leveling against the speaker pretty much. And but what he does see is those are powerful tools and in, ah, moment after the seventies, where everyone in Washington is not quite as steady as they used to be because of how the sixties just shook our whole political system. This was the path for Republicans to take on the Democrats, even though Democrats had enacted most of the reforms and So by the end of the eighties, things like the ethics rules are thoroughly weaponized by Newt Gingrich, and in some ways they lose the promise of what they had been meant to do. They’re no longer mechanisms to achieve accountability. There are mechanisms of partisan warfare that was really one of the major transformations that Gingrich is central

[0:11:01 Peniel] to easily. One of the striking things about your book is the way in which, uh, Jim right is going to be. His career is going to be destroyed, but paralleling that is really the Iran Contra scandal. And really, I look at this and I read your book and I say, Well, why was there such, um uh, why why did Jim Wright topple and fall and really, the Reagan administration? Andi, George H. W. Bush sort of sort of get a free pass from the press? Do you think Jim Wright deserved to fall? And I see the ethical lapses. Absolutely. And certainly the trickle of stories becomes a tsunami when we find out that somebody who is very close to write and committed a heinous crime against a woman in his youth and only served 27 months in prison. But a reporter publishes a bombshell story about the level of violence, and you have elected officials like Pat Schroeder and others who really come out against Speaker right, and that’s really gonna lead to his resignation. So one do you think he deserved to have to resign? But also why the disparate treatment in terms of the media in terms of Iran Contra, which was a true scandal? Even Reagan, in his diary, as you know, is saying, Hey, there’s gonna be resignations and you have the great picture in your book November 25th, 1986 where Reagan and Bob Dole and that they’ve just lost the Senate, the Republicans, and they are shell shocked. I looked at that as really a pivotal turning point in history. Why didn’t Democrats sort of regain control of the White House, the House of Representatives, and just really move us forward? And really, we see the speaker of the House just get toppled instead. Really fascinating.

[0:12:56 Julian] Yeah, I mean the the heart of Jim Wright’s downfall. It revolves around these ethical stories, stories about ethical issues that came up in the press that Gingrich then circulated and distributed which the House Ethics Committee began an investigation into, um and what? You know, the two major charges. One was that right sold this book of speeches he had published in bulk when he spoke in front of interest groups and book on her area. Book royalties were not covered by those ethics rules, so this was something politicians could do onto. He had a relationship with, AH, business relationship with a real estate developer and an old friend in Fort Worth. Andi again. Nothing, it turned out, was breaking. The actual ethics rules in the House didn’t break the law, but both looked bad on Gingrich, was able to turn this into like a new Watergate essentially and kept saying He’s the most corrupt speaker in American history and it’s really hard to see those ethical claims really adding up to very much. They certainly look bad, Right? Probably could have had better judgment, but he was doing what a lot of politicians did. This was part of Washington. He never violated any of the rules that he had to follow, and so there was really no formal reason that he had to step down, and certainly on everything other than the story you just mentioned. What Gingrich is doing is he’s criminalizing this public servant of many decades in ways that I think really mischaracterized who he waas or or what he did. So there was no reason for him to resign. He was doing it as an act to try to save Congress and to save Washington and Democrats. And this will get to your second question were pressuring him even though he didn’t have to resign. The Democrats controlled the chamber. Many Democrats after that story breaks, which again raises the whole new issue about one of his closest, uh, closest confidants are whispering to the press that he has to go and that they won’t support him there, telling him this privately and Democrats basically at that last moment buckle. They fear what this will all due to their party. But But I didn’t see in gym right, someone who was doing things that were far above what we were seeing from other people at the time, including Gingrich, who again that year he is doing this, is under investigation for raising money from interest groups connected to Atlanta. Ah, to sell his book so There’s a nine irony there, and I don’t know why Republicans didn’t suffer. Maura, I think from Iran. Iran Contra is really a big question. This was a huge scandal. Uh, it implicated high level officials in the administration, including the vice president, in illegal activity and, you know, violating what Congress had prohibited them from doing by sending money to the Contras. But they’re able to elude this, And I think there is a disconnect in some ways in how the parties air responding to the scandal and how they fight the scandal. The administration’s very effective in terms of its media counterpunch as this scandal unfolds. When there’s hearings on Capitol Hill, Oliver North, who is one of the point people in this, basically is turned into a hero rather than a villain. And in the 1988 campaign, when George H. W. Bush is the candidate, he’s running against Michael Dukakis, and this question surrounds his campaign. Here’s someone who was implicated in this massive scandal. What does he do? He starts talking about Jim right? All of a sudden, he starts using Gingrich’s rhetoric based on the advice of Lee Atwater in the campaign and So I think there’s, uh, a strategic difference in how the parties handle these issues. But be, I’d say the right scandalous, simpler for people to understand. Gingrich turned him into a villain like corrupt, behind the scenes dealmaking villain, where Iran Contra was just more complex for many Americans and Democrats didn’t translate the implications effectively.

[0:17:18 Peniel] And then when we fast forward a little bit, of course, Newt Gingrich become speaker of the House in 1995 after the 1994 wave congressional election and and very famously or infamously introduces the Republican contract, uh, on America or with America. Um, what do we say about the irony of Gingrich in 1997 becoming the first speaker in the history of the institution to be punished for violating the ethics rules? Is there Is there really, Um, and in a lot of ways, I think you present him as somebody who’s really doesn’t seem to experience a lot of public shame even when he’s caught in lapses or ethical violations.

[0:18:03 Julian] He doesn’t. Hey, is someone who has very thick skin. I can’t get into his psychology. But whenever he was faced with a public discussion of things he did, whether it was his relationships with women while married in the early 19 eighties, or whether it was in 1987 when yes, ironically, he becomes the first speaker who actually falls under this ethics cloud. Ondas punished for it. He doesn’t care. He’s totally convinced in his rightness on whenever faced with a scandal, he is capable of at least publicly not only defending himself but explaining why everyone is wrong. But it points to, in my opinion, fundamental thinness to how much he cares about the actual issues because he did not live in ethical life politically or personally, even though he made this the central theme on. And so it wasn’t totally surprising that when he’s in the public spotlight when he’s one of the most powerful members of our government, 1997 he can’t even if he’s not shamed by this, he can’t avoid the implications of the way he acts. And he can’t do that either. In 1998 1 year later, when he is forced to resign because he’s having another affair as he is leading the impeachment for President Clinton based on an affair that he had And so I think a lot of this internal hypocrisy and duality is just exposed and becomes too politically costly for the GOP. He’s never, though, really apologized in any way for either Andi. He’s always convinced that he is wrong.

[0:19:56 Peniel] You right near the end of the book under Gingrich, the dark ID of Democratic politics triumph in this scorched earth battle. The Tea Party Republicans elected in 2010 in a backlash to President Barack Obama’s first two years in office embodied everything that Gingrich had preached in the Senate. Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell perfected this style of politics in the upper chamber. Their generation assumed that Gingrich’s partisanship was the new normal. I want to talk about that and really fast forward to both the Obama presidency, but certainly the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and really the way in which we live now, because later on you say that you write their hostage taking approach to politics, where legislative norms were shattered, an ordinary decision decisions such as raising the federal debt ceiling or funding the government became tools to achieve political power regardless of the cost to the democracy grew directly out of Gingrich’s having made anything permissible by bringing down the speaker. So I thought that was very powerful. And I want us to talk about how we’re living now and how Gingrich and his time in office and even his time as a pundit after being speaker is really so connected to both the presidency of Trump but also the pitfalls and the the conflicts of the Obama administration that the Obama administration had to face from the opposition.

[0:21:36 Julian] Yeah, I’d say two to start the and back to your original question, uh, earlier in the conversation is that 1989 is so important because look, we have had throughout American history what we might call political bomb throwers and the person who Gingrich and always compared to by Democrats and even some Republicans in the early eighties with Joe McCarthy on that. This is what he was doing. He was throwing out smear and slander. He was using the media to get kind of replication and repetition of anything, he said, without fact checking, and he was just a destructive person. But what happens in 99 is so important, because again he is elected into the leadership, so you take this and rather than containing it, Rather than pushing it aside, the Republican Party embraced it on. And then a few years later, he’s speaker of the House. And that shift is quite important because then through today it it changed what the party was about. And it certainly created a Republican Party that was totally comfortable with this version of what partisanship can be. And I thought I started writing this book during the Obama years, and I was really trying to make ah story or write a history about the tea party. And when Obama was president, it was a remarkable period and that here was, ah, leader who made his name back in 2000 and four with a pretty powerful speech about the red and blue divide being artificial and taking on this map that the whole country had embraced as a reality. And he continued to believe in that through his first months in office. Um, and what he learned was there was a Republican Party that was hellbent on obstructing him and preventing him from doing anything. But equally important, they were willing. to use every lever they had rhetorically and institutionally to stop him. Andi and I think both parts of those whether you’re talking about the birth of rhetoric, where you had mainstream politicians adopting language about the president that were really unacceptable but suddenly very normative, or whether you’re talking about Senator Mitch McConnell, who was willing always to go there, you know, quote unquote to stop the president, even at the end of his term. Just preventing a nominee for the Supreme Court from even having meetings with Republicans. This is a threat. I mean, this is exactly the roadmap that, uh, that Newt Gingrich had laid out that the party had accepted on put forward and which I think has now reached a second generation of Republicans, certainly with the Tea Party slash Freedom Caucus. And then now, obviously with President Trump, who is remarkably similar to what you see in Gingrich, uh, in in the early 19 eighties, though much more disconnected from any sense of party or or larger, larger movement. Um, but this was central, I think, to the Obama presidency, this clash between what Obama wanted to do and what he believed about American politics and the reality that he faced in Congress which he talked a lot about at the end of his presidency. Um, and I have a quote in the end of the book, Very end. When David Remnick, the New Yorker editor um, interviewed Obama e think it was December after the election of President Trump and asked him, How did this happen? And Obama gave this long answer where he says that Trump is not an outlier. And he says he’s a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party for the past 10 15 for 20 years. And it’s almost a confessional interview. And he says he was surprised by how much those tactics and rhetoric Hey, says it completely jumped the rails. There were no warning principles, Obama said. There was no one to say. This is going too far. This isn’t what we stand for on DSO. I think this was it. The heart of the politics, of what Obama faced some of the limits of what he could achieve. Um, but it wasn’t something that happened in November 2000 and 16, and that Obama quotes so important because as president he could look back and see he himself missed just how much had changed in the opposition party.

[0:26:21 Peniel] Well, what’s the role of race and anti black racism? White supremacy? Um, certainly we see it now. We’ve seen these massive protest for racial justice after George Floyd’s murder in May of 2020. But when you think about Gingrich and in the 19 eighties, the 19 nineties, what is the role? Because certainly we all know it’s historians about Nixon and the Southern strategy. But is there is Gingrich connected to the way in which race on really anti black racism, anti immigrant, immigrant racism, anti Latin, X racism, fears of Muslims but certainly race? Um plays a role in sort of forging these new Republican tactics that certainly Donald J. Trump has perfected when we think of his massive rallies and make America great again and Maga and sort of this symbol of ah white, ethno nationalist state. Um, what is Gingrich’s role in 1989 in that or if any?

[0:27:26 Julian] Yeah, he has a role in it. And if you were interviewing Gingrich now of everything you could ask him, he would respond to this, uh, most vociferously and reject the idea that he played on the politics of race, and he has a set kind of list of accomplishments or moments in his career on I mentioned this with the digs issue where it came up, where he separates himself from the white backlash elements of Republican politics, which were already very strong. Or, I believe, in the 19 eighties. And so one debate you can have is about Gingrich. And he often said he often would get into the rhetoric about welfare. And recently he’s been very supportive when President Trump has made uh, really reactionary speeches that are explicitly playing on race, and Gingrich explains them a different way. Eso there’s what is Gingrich about? Internally, I don’t think raises his primary issue on And but that gets the 10.2. I do think he opens a kind of partisanship where Republican leaders were fine and comfortable playing on these elements of white backlash and including groups and voters who had that as an explicit agenda in the coalition. Because once you have prioritized partisanship above anything else, anything else, um then it’s easy. In some ways toe let you know really dangerous groups into your governing coalition because those principles or moral boundaries have faded away, and this accelerates in the eighties, it really intensifies. In the nineties, everything Nixon was trying to do in 68 really comes to fruition. Is the whole party moves in that direction? And its culminating with President Trump was just saying out loud what was instead out loud before on. There’s a really interesting book coming out soon by Stuart Stevens, who was, ah, Republican Operative for years and worked on the Mitt Romney campaign. And it’s worth your listeners reading because it’s a very confessional book. About every element of the Republican Party he is now acknowledging is as bad as you could imagine. And he has a whole section on race where he goes through, You know, the Gingrich Lee Atwater period through today and says, This is what the party was playing on. It wasn’t very subtle, and they were using code words, and they were trying to find symbols to talk about race. But it was about race that they were trying to capitalize on. And so Gingrich is important. He’s the generation, regardless of where he stands, that opens the doors to this, and now it’s just kind of hit full, full steam and it’s out front because President Trump doesn’t feel the need to hide it anymore.

[0:30:31 Peniel] Okay, My last question is, where do we go from here? I mean, you lay out beautifully how we got here, one of the main causes in terms of Newt Gingrich. But you also really analyze very succinctly throughout the book. The pitfalls that these tactics have on American democracy just are the the idea of governance the idea of the health of the democracy, Bipartisanship? Democracy essentially, is always about compromise if you’re doing an ethical democracy and obviously we’ve gone toe a winner take all power politics where anything goes. And Gingrich is a big architect of that, and we’ve seen people who have taken it to even bigger levels like Mitch McConnell, which you write about towards the end of the book. So where do we go from here? How do we build a new consensus? Can we build a new consensus where we do have bipartisanship, we do transform. Ah, maybe both parties need to be transformed, but we have a different, um, way in a different political culture Moving forward.

[0:31:45 Julian] I think it’s it’s very difficult and my book is intended to make that clear that this isn’t about one election change that’s gonna happen with a new leader and that should President Trump lose in November and Joe Biden is the new president, he’s going to face a Republican party. That is pretty much the same, uh, most likely as they are right now, it’s not going to transform. And and I think kind of the most important question. It’s not even bipartisanship. It’s simply the idea that a commitment to governing and a commitment to the importance of maintaining the health of our institutions, our democratic institutions is as important as partisanship. And and I fundamentally believe, Gingrich just got rid of that balance that politicians had, and that’s a dangerous place to be. And we’re living it now in this pandemic. Where, uh, you know, people are taken aback by how far the president and many red state governors have been willing to thoroughly politicize their response to a crisis that everyone faces equally in terms of red and blue. Onda politicize the science that’s necessary to actually cure us and contain the spread of the virus. So the dangers that I’m talking about have been very evident at the time. This book comes out because government is dysfunctional. It’s not working now, and I think one party is more to blame than the other. It’s it’s much more enthusiastically embraced this mindset. I think you know the three things to look for in terms of, Can we change? Can you see a change in the Republican Party that would create AH healthier form of partisanship? If not bipartisanship? One would be a new election that is so devastating to the party, the kind we haven’t seen since 1984 landslide election that forces Republicans to open their eyes to this shrinking base that they have of electoral support and potentially come January 2 21 see themselves having lost all power in Congress and the White House, even in state government, to the extent they actually finally have a conversation about what’s been going on and the need to reform themselves to would be a generational change in the Republican Party. Ah, younger Republicans who have come of age seen all this and rather than the future, being young Tucker Carlson, who would continue along this path different kinds of Republicans maybe, uh, Mawr kind of eclectic in terms of their policy preferences, but certainly more interested in being functional, who start to take over the new Gingrich’s but but move politics in a different way. And finally, the third kind of area of change would be reformed issues that aren’t kind of very exciting. Always but institutional reforms dealing with fundamentals from campaign finance and the way interest groups consume way members through money, uh, to changes in the media, which wouldn’t be political, that this would be in the boardrooms of television stations and newspapers in terms of how they cover stories. And and you know, what kinds of partisan journalism is legitimate, even, uh, to issues of how our district’s drawn in most states. And can we create nonpartisan bodies? to do this so some of the pressure on partisanship diminishes. All three of these, really, if we’re being realistic, are going to have to be part of mix that leads us to a better place. Otherwise, I think what we’re looking at is a deeply rooted approach to politics that will not go away easily and without these other things happen and it won’t go away any time soon.

[0:36:00 Peniel] Well, there you have it. I think we’re at least ending on an optimistic note, somewhat optimistic that there are some potential reforms that can help us get beyond the current more than just gridlock but dysfunction in our democracy and our anti democracy within our democracy. We’ve been speaking with Julian Zelizer, who’s the author of most recently Burning Down the House. Newt Gingrich, The Fall of the Speaker and the Rise of the New Republican Party. It’s a terrific book. Go out and get it. And Julian Zelizer is the Malcolm Stephen Forbes class of 1941 professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and a fellow at New America. He’s the author and editor of Numerous, and I Mean Numerous books on, and he’s also a weekly columnist for CNN.com. Thank you, Julian Zelizer. Thank you, my friend, for joining us. 

[0:36:55 Julian] Thanks so much for having me and for a terrific conversation.

[0:37:00 Peniel] Thanks for listening to this episode, and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph, that’s P E N I E L J O S E P H and our website csrd.lbj.utexas.edu and the Center for Study of Racing Democracies on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you