Conference hosted by the library of congress. Its just under an hour and a half. This is our final panel for the history conference on the political legacy of Newt Gingrich, arguably one of the most influential speakers of the house in the past hundred years. I think theres no dispute that were all living the legacy of Newt Gingrich, so i will turn it over to Jacob Strauss who is our chair for the panel from the Congressional Research service. You guys put on a great conference. Its wonderful to get away from our desks and talk to people about all kinds of subjects related to congress so im very happy to be here. As colleen said, we will talk about the historical and political legacy of Newt Gingrich and we stand between lunch and you going home which may or may not be a good thing, but we have a great panel with two very interesting speakers so stick around because there will be good stuff here. Well start with the paper by mack green and jeffrey crouch. As we agreed before, each speaker will get 20 minutes and well do two papers and well open it up to you for questions, so, matt . Thank you, jacob. We have a lot of people to thank. I just want to take a couple of minutes before doing the presentation to thank colleen shogun for putting together this conference. American university and Catholic University for providing Financial Support for our project which is an ongoing project and this is part of a book length project were doing about Newt Gingrich, and i also want to thank carly jones, our Research Assistant and i said how is the data gathering going . She said, its great. Im still gingriching, which is the first time ive ever used the word gingrich used as a verb. We want to thank the dirksson center and the study of congress for their assistance and the Research Staff at the university of west george a special collections and the Carl Albert Center and the library of congress where weve done Archival Research, as well. So this is part, as i say, a booklength project about the leadership of Newt Gingrich and what im going to present today is the work weve done so far on gingrich in his first three terms in the house of representatives. So we have three general goals on this project and the first is provide a general overview of the kinds of things that gingrich did in congress not just as speaker, but before he was speaker and before he was in leadership. Second, we want to delve a little bit into this question of gingrichs contributions to congress and the way that congress works. There are some who have argued that gingrich made major contributions to the house and also contributed to increased partisanship and those other two have argued that its contextual factors and we can delve into that and provide an answer to that question and third, the model of leadership that can explain the kinds of things gingrich did not only as speaker and also as an informal lead and are someone outside of leadership so very briefly, i want to talk about some of the other things that others said about gingrich in trying to conceptuali conceptualize gingrich as a lead are in the house of representatives. Barbara wrote a piece that gingrich should be thought of as an agent when he was speaker and an agent of his party and constrained by the things his party wanted him to do or didnt want him to do, and strahan wrote about gingrich as speaker as nor of a transformational leader which is more by the nature in which he was elected was able to bring about substantive changes and major independent changes to congress, and then ive argued that gingrich is one of many speakers who were driven by multiple goals and not only what his party wanted and what his district wanted and what he personally wanted and one issue with these approaches is that they look at gingrich as speaker and were hopeful for a broader approach that could hopefully explain gingrich as speaker and before he was speaker and try to capture the things about him that made him independent or some would say one of a kind, but at the same time be generalizable. What we suggest in the paper is to think about gingrich as what we call a strategic, political entrepreneur. Let me break that down. First the political entrepreneur side, a number of whom are here today and also particularly entrepreneurs in congress. So greg morrow has written about legislative entrepreneurs, and those who expend scarce resources to try to enact legislation in the legislature. Eric schickler writes about entrepreneurs who bring about institutional change, what could be called procedural entrepreneurs. So what we suggest in the paper is another kind of entrepreneur, a political entrepreneur. This is someone who expends resources to bring about a collective good in this case for a party or somed in Logical Group in the party and it could help get partisans reelected or recruiting folks to office or doing other things to help the party. Now this is usually what people expect formal Party Leaders to do, but what we argue is you could have rank and file members do this, as well, and in the interest of time i cant go into too much detail, but we speculate in the paper about other rank and file members who might qualify as being this category of political entrepreneur. The other side of this is the strategic side. Now one would expect that entrepreneurs would be strategic, thinking medium to long term about how to achieve their particular objectives, but of course, they dont necessarily have to be. In gingrichs case, it is important to emphasize the strategic side of being an entrepreneur and making plans and having goals, medium and longterm goals and acting strategically to achieve those goals. So what we do in the paper is talk a little bit about strategy and we borrow from military theory in thinking about strategy. In particular, a wellestablished definition of strategy as a threelegged stool and the idea is that a stool to be stable, the three legs need to be of the same length and in this case, the three legs of strategy are your objectives and your immediate objectives and your means by which you would achieve those and the resources you have available to do so. If the legs are not of equal length, the stool is more unstable and the risk of failure in achieving your broad, strategic goal increases and i did this both to think about strategy in terms of what gingrich is trying to do, but also suggest that it could help us give insight into why gingrich was, for the first two congresses unable to achieve his immediate strategic objective and was more able to do so in his Third Congress. So what we do in the paper is we identify the broad goals that we argue gingrich had at least when he was in the minority and then the shorter term objectives means and resources he had to achieve those. I wont go through the whole list on the table, but i will note that first of all, his primary goal from the moment he got elected to congress, in fact, before he was even sworn in was to win the majority of the Republican Party and the speaker to maintain that. Say what you want about gingrich, this was a goal he had consistently as a member of congress. It was an unflagging goal that he had to get the republicans and the majority in the house and recall that the republican his lost the majority in the house in 1954 and were still in the minority when gingrich was elected. The second was to transform society and societal ideas. He was very ambitious. It was not for him just about passing legislation. It was about changing society and the way Society Worked and the way people thought and it was a bold objective that he had and the third was to increase his personal influence either within congress or outside of it. Now this, im going to go through briefly im going to list the tables that sort of outline what gingrich took during the three congresses. Im not going to go through all of them, but ill highlight a couple in each of the congresss that we look at in the paper. It is the first in which hes elected and there is a series of things that hes doing that we argue fit the definition of a strategic entrepreneur, trying to achieve one or more of his goals. A couple of things ill note about this particular congress, one is from the very get go he was identified by reporters as someone who was assertive in trying to achieve a republican majority, so here, for example, is an excerpt from an article that came in may of 1979 entitled those militant gop freshmen and hes one of those militant gop freshmen who was identified in this article and not long after he is elected and the other thing i would note is that and ill come back to the subject, gingrich memos. He wrote memos to staff and he wrote memos to other members and from the get go, he is talking about winning a majority and talking about strategies and this is an excerpt from a memo, the strategic Republican Program and whats the very first thing . Theyve got to win a majority. Thats the first thing theyve got to do. Everything flows from that. In his next congress, the 97th congress whats happened is as you know, Ronald Reagan has been elected president and the republicans have taken a majority in the senate. The republicans have one seat in the house and they have a large minority, but theyre still in the minority. So gingrich is doing a number of things that we argue fit the description of political entrepreneur. A couple of things i do want to point to in detail and the first is an attempt to oust speaker tip oneal between the november 1980 election and the election for speaker in january and the opposition in the reagan budget and tax bill. The attempt to oust oneal is sort of interesting. This is an effort to convince conservative democrats to vote with republicans for an alternative candidate. Theres some potential and folks like Sonny Montgomery of mississippi as a possible candidate and this appears to get from the Archival Research and its a pretty serious effort by gingrich to the point that theres even a list thats put together of current or expected chairmen of committees and its not here in this slide, but a list of possible alternatives who would be given the positions of being chairs of committees if this plan were to succeed and half of the committees were chaired by republicans and the other half by conservative democrats. Needless to say this is not work and one could argue that this is gingrich not so much interested in any of these goals because if it works the republicans have a procedural majority and they dont need to take over the house and one of the things that he writes in one of his memos, this is winwin for us because if it doesnt work then people will at least know that the democrats are the majority in the house and that theme of party differentiation is very important as a strategic objective for gingrich and he wants the public to know there are two parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and the folks in charge in the house are the democrats and so they should be blamed for anything that goes wrong in the house of representatives. Then in 1982 geng rich initiates an effort to defeat reagans budget tax proposal and this is when deficits start to grow and the Reagan White House is getting nervous and theyre negotiating with the republican white house, and to raise taxeses and gingrich quite openly opposes that and they try to get enough votes to defeat it. If you think about it, it is a bold move for a secondterm republican in the house of representatives to go against Ronald Reagan and the president of the United States on his own budget and tax proposal, but again, this is about party differentiation. Yes, gingrich opposed taxes and tax increases and also, this would muddle the picture base then people wouldnt know that democrats stand for raising taxes and republicans stand for lowering them and so he tries to defeat this. For the remainder of the time i want to the talk about gingrichs Third Congress from 1983 to 1984 because this is appearing when gingrich takes some initiatives to expand his resources or strengthen the resources he has in order to achieve his strategic objectives. First of all, in 1983, he forms the conservative Opportunity Society which is a group of about a dozen likeminded republicans in the house who agree with gingrich that the party needs to take more assertive actions to differentiate the parties, to try to embarrass democrats in the hopes of winning the house of representatives. In terms of cos, this is a key strategic resource for gingrich and one of the things that comes through in communications in gingrichs office, and in memoirs that have been written by gingrich is that the staff were worried that gingrich was overextending himself and he was trying to do all these things for the party and what cos did is it allowed for these to be taken on by multiple members so that gingrich didnt spread himself too thin. This was a group endeavor. Gingrich is talked about as the father of cos or even the cos and i think thats a misleading account and its important to remember that it consisted of a number of republicans that either came up with ideas on their own or had other ways to help achieve the groups goals and this included folks like jed greg, connie mack, Robert Walker and vin weber. The other final thing to note is 1983 it spends most of its time to figure out what it is, exactly and what it wants to do. So they make an effort to survey ranking members and what was on your agenda and what would you like to accomplish and they hold a conference in 1983 in baltimore and for republicans to come and talk about what is the party and what do we stand for and this kind of thing . And then near the end of 1993 there was a discussion about members about what to do the following year. So for instance, eddie my, junior, an important republican consultant at the time puts together a memo which he sends to gingrich and webber talking about what can happen early in the following year and he mentions among other things, we need something to do early in the session that gets attention and particularly attention to issues that are popular with the public, but that democrats in the house are using their agenda to keep from being voted on and that is exactly what they do and just a brief mention on memos, one of the things that jeff and i found on doing Archival Research, he loved to write memos and they werent your usual memos and theyre detailed and theyre odd ishs in scope. Theyre broad and they talk about not just winning elections and changing society as a whole and they also really liked pictures and circles and squares, triangles and these are efforts to help people visualize whats going on in his head and thinking about how to achieve these broad goals. So finally, in 1984, cos begins an Aggressive Campaign in the house to bring attention to various issues. To some extent this is obstruction, but i would say more importantly, it was as i said bringing attention to issues. Cspan is recognized as an important avenue for republicans and back ventures to get attention to what they think are important issues and causes. So cos members begin using unanimous consent agreements. One minute special order speeches to basically say, look, we stand for balanced Budget Amendment and lineitem veto and prayer in schools, why dont the democrats bring up these issues . Whats wrong with the party . This is what they would later call water torture and it annoyed the democratic leadership and it culminated in a major event which happens in may of 1984 when gingrich and cos allies went to the floor and read excerpts from the memo as a former gingrich staffer that talks about the problems with the Democratic Partys Foreign Policy and alleges that theyre in effect, helping the enemies of america communist regimes and so forth, so members names are mentioned and its vague whether those members got enough advanced notice to go to the floor to defend themselves and it angers a lot of democrats. In the end it culminates with the point of personal privilege and he goes to the floor to defend himself and Newt Gingrich is there. Tip oneal is also there as speaker and he is clearly upset if you watch the cspan video which i highly recommend you watch the whole period because theres a lot of words exchanged from a lot of members, but early on, oneal gets to the floor and says this is the lowest thing ive ever seen in my 32 years in congress and those words are taken down which is a very rare thing to happen so the speaker, in effect, has been told what youre saying on the floor is out of order and this gets coverage in all the networks and all of the major newspapers. Now all of this sort of thing which then continues throughout the rest of 1984 does lead to minor procedural changes and the democrats limit what republicans can do and more importantly it gives Newt Gingrich and the society tremendous attention in the press which is part of what gingrich and his allies want. They want attention to what theyre doing because they want to tell the American People we are the better party and we in the minority can fix things if you make us a majority party. They kept track of speaking wen, and this is not haphazard and this is very much an organized type of effort, and you can also see that in the aggregate and this is the number of floor appearances by Newt Gingrich and 19 84, bump up, why . Because it was a use of one minute and special order speeches which is what cos is doing and as far as attention, this is data that shows a number of mentions by 1984 compared to Robert Michael, the minority leader and trent lott, the minority whip and you can see 1984 gingrich is nearly tied with those two leaders and in fact, i dont have the data to show you, but if you extend this all of the way into the early 90s, gingrich in the end is more talked about than Robert Michael, the minority leader and this is in order to achieve the ultimate goals. To conclude, and fairly strong, and the strategic political entrepreneur acting on behalf collective party goals and acting strategically and the cos is one of those, that helps him and his allies achieve their goals. So what were doing now is this is part of a book and i started in 1979 moving forward and jeff started and are we moving backward . I thought we were going like this. Youre going 99 backward and well meet in the middle and hopefully have a coherent manuscript when youre finished. Thank you very much. [ applause ] great job. Thank you, matt. Our second paper is confrontations and Newt Gingrich, jim wright and the explosion of partisan warfare in 1980s america. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me. Thanks for the library of congress for putting this together. I agree with wendy yesterday who said its kind of amazing now after 17 years with what greg and nolan have done and everyone else to see the different generations and i can say when i finished graduate school if you said there was a longrunning conference every year on congressional history, i would have said you are crazy, but here it is, and its a really wonderful event. Today i just wanted to talk a little bit from a chapter of a book im writing about the scandal that brought down speaker jim wright in may of 1989. For those of you who dont remember the story, Newt Gingrich was the principal mover in a campaign in 1988 and 1989 to raise charges that the speaker had violated the ethics role of the 1970s and two issues in particular would culminate in speaker wright deciding to resign and that he no longer had the support of the caucus. One, most famously that people remember is that he sold books in bulk to Interest Groups as a way to circumvent the honoraria law which had restrictions, but not on book royalties and the second charge raised by the Ethics Committee was about various aspects of his relationship with the Real Estate Developer in fort worth, george malik who the committee after gingrich raised this wondered whether he was trying to incur favor with the speaker because he had direct interest in federal legislation and there are all kinds of stories and you have a free use of the cadillac and the company cadillac, and the free apartment in fort worth, et cetera, et cetera. So this is a narrative history about that moment with gingrich being a key player. Its as much about wrights downfall as it is about what i think everyone here is looking at. The rise not only of gingrich, but of a new generation of republicans whose influence, i think, continues into this day who introduced a new kind of smash mouth approach to partisan warfare, who tore down many of the institutions that had been in place through the 1960s and 70s and who shaped the tenor of congressional politics ever since. Its a chapter today that they read and that im talking about is about gingrichs kind of early life and going right through 1986 and some of the key events that were important to his success in the postwatergate era. There was an understanding that after watergate and after vietnam there was a certain level of distrust and government institutions that he and the Republican Party could capitalize. Its part of an ongoing project for me to understand the history of partisan polarization since the 1960s and more than most of the other projects i have done, in this case im really interested in understanding turning points, key players, key moments that were significant without discounting the Larger Forces and the multiple pressures that create the political system we have today, but both gingrich and the downfall of wright, i believe, were quite, quite significant as turning points. And even though gingrich was an antiestablishment person and i think central to his message was a kind of antiestablishment conservatism, as much as it was a rightwing conservatism he capitalized on the processes of politics that had emerged in the 1970s. One were the ethics rules put into place in the 1970s with congressman obi being a key author of some of these rules. Two, was the creation of a Good Government reform universe here in washington, d. C. And groups such as common cause were constantly applying pressure on these issues and finally, was there the investigative postwatergate media which was constantly searching for evidence of political corruption. So ill just take you through a few parts of this chapter. Gingrich in 1980, i started chapter by saying after reagans election he wasnt happy. There was a lot of coverage of the election of republicans being e lated and of there being a revolution that just took place for conservatism, but gingrich had his eye on capitol hill. He told David Broeder of the Washington Post when asked about do you feel great about whats happened . He said were not empowered. If the reagan people let that idea get out there, we are in real trouble. We do not control the bureaucracy as of yet and we dont control the house of representatives and part of that effort, the dump oneal project as it was called was as much an effort to actually get support for replacing tip oneal kind of a quintessential northeastern urban liberal of the time, as it was to simply get publicity and get attention for the problem that they would focus on, that there was an establishment in the house of representatives and there was a democratic establishment and conservatism wouldnt thrive unless republicans retook control of the chamber. Gingrich argued that the democrats were fundamentally corrupt. He said they didnt maintain power in the house because they or their ideas were popular, but because incumbents rigged elections through gerrymandering and because they controlled Campaign Money that allowed them to constantly win office because they used arcane procedures and rules to disempower the minority and because they solidified their support for their majority through corrupt pork barrel spending and favors to Business Leaders in their districts. Gingrich had grown up in a difficult home. His parents divorced very shortly after he was born in harrisburg, pennsylvania. His mother remarried about three years after his birth to Robert Gingrich studying biology at gettysburg college. Gingrich, his father was tough, not as tough as his biological father who was physically tough, but he was not someone who provided a lot of love. He believed his kid would be selfsufficient and pretty steely. The first part of the book of the chapter looks at gingrich as he lives in europe, overseas. Hes an army brat until he returns with his family to georgia in 1960 which is when they settle in that state. He goes to emery as an undergraduate during which he married his High School Math teacher and the two of them had a relationship already and the parents were hoping that would end when he moved to emery, but it didnt and then he goes to Tulane University where he received his ph. D in history and he starts getting involved in politics and he is involved with the nelsonrockefeller primary in 1968 and works on the campaign. He thinks rockefeller is most capable of building a broad coalition. He then becomes a big fan of Richard Nixon, also thinking that he is a republican capable of, you know, having a coalition like fdr created in the 1930s. Gingrich doesnt like academia. He thinks its kind of slow and he wants to be president of the university. About a year after he gets to west georgia college, and he wants to be chair of the department, the year he gets its not his thing. So he decides politics is. In 1974 he runs for the first time against john flint who is one of the senior southern democrats so many of us were writing about. He puts together this rag tag team of Campaign Operatives who just loved his charisma and loved his whole argument about transforming american politics. His First Campaign is pretty exciting. He gets more votes than anyone thought he would, but there was not much chance of him defeating this very established incumbent especially in the era of watergate when the scandal in washington dragged down all republicans. After that election he continues to plan for the next run. He starts to befriend some conservative activists like paul weyrich who was traying to create alliances between the religious right and the gop. He runs against flint flint and he uses the label of ethics and its a very Interesting Campaign you can look back on because you can see him develop many of his themes that will help him shape a lot of his career. Flint had become the chairman of the house Ethics Committee which was not a very well respected committee at the time. The joke was if you want to kill an ethics complaint, send it to the Ethics Committee and gingrich made a point of that and used flint as a prime example of what was wrong with the democrats on capitol hill. The media begins to uncover more and more congressional corruption every day, and he said that the actions of the watergate babies had shown when they threw out several Committee Chairs in 1975 that something was wrong on capitol hill. It wasnt enough, flint was still able to defeat him. In 78 flint announces hes going to retire and part that his district has changed so much and hes out of touch with the new competition and gingrich runs a very famously Vicious Campaign against virginia schaaford using all kinds of underhanded techniques and she said she would move to washington and her family would stay in the district so her husband can keep working. He blasted her in an ad as antifamily democrat willing to break up her family in pursuit of her career. Gingrich springs into action right away and the first issue he takes on is ethics. His first target is congressman charlie diggs, the africanamerican democrat from detroit who was elected, i believe, in 1954 is in trouble in march of 78 a grand jury had indicted him. One of the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus for having accepted 60,000 in kickbacks from his staff. A jury convicted him on october 7th for 11 counts of mail fraud and for having falsified payroll forms, but his constituency reelected him during the election and while he awaited sentencing he was still a member of the house. Gingrich called this outrageous and pointed to this as a prime example of what was wrong with the democrats. He insisted that the Ethics Committee should launch an investigation and he also said digs should not be alloweded to vote on the floor. Digs disagreed with that and said he had the right to vote and in february of 1979 he delivers his first vote and gingrich goes on the attack. On oar goes on the attack and gingrich proposes to expel him from the chamber. Jim wright, the texas majority leader at the time puts forth the motion referring gingrichs complaint to the Ethics Committee essentially as a way to put it aside, and he is victorious. Today, jim wright noted in his private diary, we voted in the louse on a demagogic effort to expel charlie digg. The motion was made by a freshman republican from georgia named gingrich. Just kick him out right now, republican from georgia, without hearing or formal consideration, perhaps there is forgivable innocence in the firstterm members simplistic view. Gingrich didnt care, he felt hed won the battle and it was enough to be a very wellknown freshman and he would be vindicated soon after when the Ethics Committee charges diggs with 18 violations of the rules and followed through on a censure and diggs would resign. Gingrich continues this arne tiestablishment theme and it comes very important after the 1982 midterm elections which confirms his basic argument about what reagan will ever be able to do. He encourages the House Minority leader Robert Michael to be much more aggressive and encourage young members to take on the democrats. He said if you teach them how to be aggressive and confrontational, you will increase their abilities to fight democrats on the floor. If you teach them to avoid argument and smother the scent, they will be crippled on the floor. One of the memos that i found that had a big impact on gingrich was written by someone named bill lee, a republican consultant and operative who often gave him advice and he wrote an interesting memo right around the time that gingrich forms the conservative Opportunity Society and he basically outlines the plan that would really influence a lot of what gingrich does. His memo said that the congressional Opportunity Society was like the vietcong in vietnam prior to 1968. Cos was the vietcong whereas democrats were like the westernbacked south vietnamese government. He wrote with exist with some support from the north vietnamese and in brackets, the former Republican Party, the senate on the basis of larger shared goals, but we live under the domination of a corrupt republic of south vietnam. The democrats in the house and the majority of the 50state legislatures, local officials and governors. The premise of cos was that they needed to change the way that the republicans conducted their business. Lee wrote cos must be more than a friendly gathering of likeminded individuals who are mischievous methods by which they can disrupt the house of representatives, feed ideas to the white house, assist in the election of a few members. He said cos must be like a revolutionary guerrilla movement. He said, we must find confrontational means to assure the publicity that indicates our viewpoint that the Democratic Party is the oppressor. And the two key events i talk about, one you just heard about, which is the famous cam scam incident, where these speeches are used to essentially elicit the response that was intentional that speaker oneall did to calm, to turn the cameras, to break the rules, then gingrich blasted advertisements at all the members of cos, saying look, this is exactly what were talking about, about the democratic majority. And the second story, i dont have enough time to tell the whole story, is about a contested election in 1984 in indiana. The eighth district is an election where the outcome is unclear between Democrat Frank mccloskey and richard mcintyre. And in early 1985, as the house tries to determine who won the election, republicans accuse the democrats in the House Administration committee of not handling this process fairly and essentially trying to steal this from mcintyre. Jim wright, the majority leader, is a key intern the democratic operation along with tony clelo. And during this confrontation, gingrich and other republicans used this as yet another example, especially once the democrat is seated in the end, of how democrats dont play by the rules. And the republicans are very effective at doing some staged theater, walking out when hes about to be seated, lots of tough words about the democratic majority, leaving democrats with a clear sense of where the republicans were going. When the whole issue came to a resolution im looking for theres another great quote right here. Jim wright noted in his diary that day, it was a long ordeal for frank mccloskey. Surely, it must have been a severe strain for his nervous system. Now theres a deep schism within the gop ranks. I surely dont envy bob michael. His problems are more severe than mine. Neither he nor trent lott can make a commitment with any faith of fulfillment, the young turks referring to gingrich and others, a thirst for retribution, have now Republican Leaders on their side. This is 1985. The lunatics have taken over the asylum. One mature republican told me we might as well install a sand box for them to play in. And that kind of touches on something that i think comes out of this period, but the jim wright scandal, where the distance between the Republican Leadership and gingrich is not nearly as great as many people remember, and the leadership, including michael, were starting more and more to use a lot of the themes that gingrich was talking about. When this was all over, many, as wrights diary suggests, were aware that the tenor of politics was changing, and thats right at the point where democrats decide to select jim wright as the speaker of the house, someone who would offer a perfect foil for gingrichs campaign. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you very much, julian. Now we will turn to laurel for her comments on matt and jeffreys paper. All right, well, thank you again to colleen and everyone for the help organizing this conference. Its been a wonderful time. And thank you for the chance to read and comment on this paper. So, the basic idea that comes across in this paper that you saw in the presentation as well is the idea that gingrich can be characterized as a strategic political entrepreneur. And one of the real innovations of this paper, something that i found really interesting, was the focus on gingrichs time in the minority, rather than the focus on gingrich as speaker, which is was so much of the literature on him has tended to focus about. And i think that moving to kind of the early years of gingrichs time opens up a lot of new Research Questions and approaches that can be taken, and so, i commend both of the authors for doing that. The other goal along with this in the paper is the idea that they want to propose a theoretical model of the leadership that is at the same time kind of generalizable but also takes into account kind of the unique aspects of gingrich. So, first i want to focus on this idea of the strategic political entrepreneur. So, the basic idea as laid out in the paper is that a strategic political entrepreneur captures a lawmaker who lacks formal leadership roles but can expend personal resources to generate collective, and in this case, partycentered goods. So, i have a couple of questions that follow from this idea. So, one is this question about distinguishing between leaders versus entrepreneurs. So, i guess the first thing ill note here is that you suggest that a focus on the strategic aspect here about leadership or entrepreneurs is largely missing in the congressional literature, and i think there are a lot of scholars of congress, think about Party Leaders in particular, who do use the language of strategic behavior. So, i think one step for you to think about is, what is it that you mean by strategic thats different than how other scholars have used this term . So, kind of, how do you see this strategic aspect is different than the way people have thought about strategic voting or strategic agendasetting or other behaviors that may not be formally in the game theory sense but perhaps distinct from sort of the casual use of that term. And then going back to the point i started to raise a moment ago, its not currently clear in the paper how different versus similar you see an entrepreneur versus a leader. So, who can actually be a strategic political entrepreneur in your kind of theoretical approach . Is it only people who are outside of formal leadership roles . So, gingrich was a strategic political entrepreneur in the minority, but then once he gained leadership positions, he was not . Or is this something thats more of a fluid type of characterization where people can hold this role both when theyre outside the formal leadership powers as well as inside the formal leadership powers . The other question that i have about this kind of broad approach and kind of theoretical framing of gingrich as a strategic political entrepreneur is a question of falsifiability. And perhaps thats too harsh of a claim or question for what it is that youre trying to do in this paper, but i think that it would help you kind of tighten up and crisp up the argument to really lay out what sorts of evidence would lead you to reject this argument . So, if you saw the following sorts of behaviors in your archival work, what would actually lead you to say, no, gingrich does not fit this characterization . So, kind of give us a tighter bound on what is and is not a strategic political entrepreneur. And i think with this as well is thinking about, well, what are you if youre not a strategic political entrepreneur . Is it just every other type of member of congress and then strategic political entrepreneur . Or are there kind of different categories where, you know, someone has some of the characteristics of a strategic political entrepreneur, but not all of them . And ill come back to this in a moment in terms of thinking about, like the overarching goal of what you want to do and i think we heard more of that differentation in terms of where youre thinking of this going with a book, so some of these perhaps are less relevant given that youre thinking about it because its kind of a gingrichfocused book, but hopefully, it will be helpful in thinking about kind of delineating the bounds of what is and is not within this category. So, the next argument that they make in the paper is that gingrichs entrepreneurial successes and failures can be explained by drawing on theory of military strategy. And in particular, this idea of the threelegged stool that we heard about or think about objectives, concepts or methods and resources as needing to be in balance. So, the first step, though, before you can even get to these three legs, though, is that they note that not everyone even has goals that theyre trying to achieve. So, if you dont have goals, then presumably, you cant be a strategic political entrepreneur. So, id push you a little bit to think more about what is the right type of leader that gets to be in here in the first place . So, in the paper, you note in several instances that there were other republicans who had some similarities to gingrich. So, for instance, that there were other leaders who supported an effort to win the majority. You noted at some points that there were differences in degree, rather than kind between gingrich and these other individuals. So, id push you to kind of answer the question of why is it then that gingrich is at least potentially a strategic political entrepreneur and his successes and failures can be assessed by this model, whereas these other members are not. Or perhaps youre not saying that theyre not, but that could be teased out more carefully. Likewise, you noted that there were other outspoken freshmen in the 96 congress who also pressed for a more campaignoriented, confrontational approach. So, is it that these members didnt truly have the same goals as gingrich . Is it that they did, but then they failed on kind of this balanced threelegged stool . Or kind of, what is it that makes gingrich a good fit here and others not . So, the bulk of the paper, as we saw in the presentation as well, is a really interesting and rich narrative of gingrichs early years, so telling a lot of interesting anecdotes and stories about kind of how his early years in congress developed. But i push you in terms of particularly how you want to link up this narrative part to the theoretical model and the kind of strategy, threelegged stool, is that some of what you want to think of as the successes and failures i think get lost a little bit within the historical narrative. So particularly too the extent that you want to use this threelegged stool metaphor for explaining when someone is successful and when they have failures, itd be helpful to kind of think more clearly about, you know, which of what gingrichs experience was a success, which was a failure, and to tie it more directly back to, in this case, he lacked the resources, or in this case, you know, he didnt have the means or whatever the case may be. So, thinking a little bit more specifically about just a couple of questions that come up for me when thinking about this threelegged stool model and how you apply it. So, as i already alluded to before, theres this initial step of identifying someones goals. And so, id be curious kind of how you think about applying this and how the decisions that you make as researchers about these goals ultimately affect the subsequent categories and the assessments of success and failures and kind of you know, i dont doubt that gingrichs goal was to win and maintain gop majority, but on other aspects, how are you selecting these and how does that kind of lead you to subsequent decisions within this . Another point here is that the last goal that you note is a largely personal goal, so to increase personal influence. And this seemed to me to be a little bit at odds with other arguments that you made about the strategic political entrepreneur really being focused on the collective side and not focused on the individual side. So, i was curious whether you see a tension here, and if so, how that may play out. Turning to the next sections here in terms of the objectives and means, one question that i had was thinking about how you sought to separate the goals versus the objectives in terms of the longer term versus shorter term. In terms of the means, this is where not knowing entirely where you were hoping to go with this broader project. It wasnt necessarily clear to me how you planned to fit his time in the majority into this same framework, or whether you did or not. And finally in terms of the resources here, you noted that initially gingrich seemed to lack resources, but then he began to get some of them through roles on various, either committees or organized groups, so the Republican Party platform committee, the republican Strategy Group and cos. And so, this raised up questions for me about how important or unimportant are these kind of formal or kind of, at least somewhat institutional roles that someone has. So is creating these kind of creating an opportunity for yourself part of being a strategic political entrepreneur, or are these things that could have helped anyone, had they had the opportunity to have these positions. So, lastly then, i just want to come back to the bigpicture thinking of what is ultimately the goal of this paper and how might you be able to kind of push this forward . So, in terms of the core goals, i think there are a couple ways to go with this that could be interesting. One is to kind of explain gingrichs successes and failures over time, perhaps with this thinking about the evolution of his leadership. So for instance, can you use this same theory to explain kind of the broader, you know, several decades of time, versus if youre trying to think about gingrich versus other leaders. That would be a different way that you could go in terms of thinking about his leadership versus others. And so, then with this, i push you a little bit more to think about, what are the other alternative explanations for someone saying i dont buy the strategic political entrepreneur. What else might you think about there that youre countering . And with that, too, whats is there a puzzle thats missed by the existing approaches . And i think here theres probably something about the majority versus minority time thats going to be interesting there, so id push you to think about that. Thanks. [ applause ] thank you, laurel. And last but certainly not least, on this panel, we turn to mike for his comments on julians paper. Thanks. Hi, mike crespin from the university of oklahoma. Like everybody else, i want to thank colleen for putting on such a great conference, and her staff for doing a lot of the work. You know, its interesting, you think about this conference, and weve done a good job of hitting some of the congressional theories. So, last year it was congress in the district. We were all relaxed and wearing our shorts. This year its members at work. Were wearing our suits. Were in this beautiful building. We had a great dinner last night, got to talk with some of the members, where they told us one of our colleagues whos not here, but how his measure is bunk. So, its good theyre reading our work, right . So, that was great to do last night. So, yeah, these two papers, like the last panel, these two papers really went together, perhaps even better than the last panel. I think you have shared quotes across papers, so thats excellent. So, yeah, this paper is a really good paper, extremely well written, great background on gingrich and his family, and you learn some of the psychology of what sort of maybe drove him to be the person that he happens to be. In some ways, this is a really hard paper to discuss, right . How or critique. How do you critique his childhood and anecdotes . So, ill try to add a few things or some questions that were raised. I did want to plug the Carl Albert Center, although only slightly. I forgot i didnt look at the program you two have already been out and looked at the same project, at the paper, so dont come out. Theres nothing there. But we do have the dick armey and the Mickey Edwards papers, which depending on sort of i havent read the other chapters in the books that might be helpful for some of the things that come next in the story. So, come on out. So, i love this quote that you both read in your presentations. Essentially, its talking about incumbents rigging elections through gerrymandering and arcane procedures and controlling the money and pork barrel spending. One of my favorite academic buzz words is closing the loop. And so, you know, i dont know where this book is going, but its interesting, sort of the republicans the democrats can make the same arguments about the republicans later on towards the end of their first majority, that, right, we blame gerrymandering on the republicans, they did a lot of pork barrel spending. So, depending on where the book is going, it might be interesting, like, how did they go from the path of saying these are all the bad things towards sort of starting to do these things to keep their majority . So, this quote is very early in the chapter, and youre like, who is he talking about again . So, it seems the classic critique against the majority party. So, things that, like, questions that i had were things about you know, so, both of the papers talk about messaging. You know, whats happening on the legislative side is something that i was interested in, so we all know about the oneminute speeches and the special orders, but how effective was gingrich in sort of keeping the minority now, its not his minority, but the minority together on votes and fighting with reagan on some of these things, which is an interesting part of the story is you have republicans fighting republicans, perhaps trying to cooperate with democrats. So these three parts here are moving, and you know, id be interested in whats happening legislatively on that. You talk about the budget, but particular votes or amendments or other parts that the republicans were unwilling to cooperate. And you know, so, he has his goals, gingrich successful into the leadup of getting majority, and of course, his goal of earning the majority was successful, right . He earned the majority in the 94 election. But you think about some of the legislative things, and you think about, you know, this idea of hes keeping his majority together, perhaps the minority together in voting against what was coming to the floor, and you look at, like, what percent of the minority is still thinking about the presentation from yesterday with francis and james . You know, what percent of the minority are voting the majority . And its fairly high until you get to this 103rd congress. So, i dont know how thats how does that story work out . We all know republicans gained more seats in the 92 election, but in these other congresses, like, can you point out, like oh, thats gingrichs work in there . And so, i thought it might be worth looking at some idea. And again, like, your research doesnt do that, right . Youre telling stories through different ways and i think we learn a lot through that so in a way, im just sort of answering my own questions here rather than asking you to do it. So, a little slight of hand, i guess. So, its interesting, like what happens to party unity between the two parties . And so, this figure here, and i follow suit with everyone else, and no one can read the figures on the screens, but the bottom here is the congress, then we have Percent Party unity by congress, and the big, gray box there is sort of the gingrich era. And you do see it starts to cuff, right . So, perhaps gingrich is sort of taking the minority of the republicans and holding them together against the democrats, right . So, it takes a couple congresses, but then it starts to tick up. We reach this peak in the 103rd104th congress. We see a peak and then it comes down. So, i actually took this from a paper i wrote with david and whats going on here a lot is the agenda changes, so we want to be careful thinking about these scores, but the general trends stay the same, no matter what you do. So, in some ways, perhaps, okay, gingrich was successful in holding the party together. Another thing we talk about is theyre not allowing the minority to offer amendments, this is republicans say the democrats arent letting them get their votes. So, we break votes into final passage votes, both regular passage suspension and sort of other things and then nonpassage votes, partisan, procedural votes, and amendments and some other things. And generally, the mix of votes doesnt change too much in the highlighted period there. So you look at amendments, actually pretty stable. If anything, we see an uptick in amendments right before the republicans take over, and then they take over, so perhaps the democracy are conceding some, but we do see an increase in partisan procedural votes as we get into the later years, middle years of gingrich, at least. So, this is fighting back against the democrats. So, thats just the mix of votes. And then you know, whats the sort of two sides fighting against each other . What we do see as an increase in party unity as we go further along in the time series across these votes. In regular passage votes, we see an increase in party unity, and then also a huge increase in partisan procedural votes. So, thinking back to bruces comment from yesterday, motions to recommit are wrapped up in here, special rule votes, and so, in some ways, maybe it doesnt show up in all the measures, but we do see some success by the minority at least sort of forcing the majority to, you know, they vote against each other. So, answering my question, was gingrich successful beyond getting the majority, in some ways, yes, right . I think he was able to sort of pull his side together in a cohesive fashion. So, ill stop there and leave it to the floor. Thank you very much. Wonderful, weve done very well for time, so we can now have time to answer your entertain some questions in the back. Wait, were waiting for microphones. There we go. Thank you. So, there are a couple of points that i think are worth noting about, on both of these papers. Which is an area that ive been doing some work on myself. One is i think its very important to reemphasize i think julian made this point in particular the degree to which gingrich and a lot of these, the rising republicans in the late 70s viewed the Republican Leadership as much of an enemy as they did the democrats. And that, of course, grows over time. But they were very articulate, not only in terms of bob michael and guy vanderjet and some of the other guys who were their targets, but also with respect to reagan, who many of them viewed as an inferior leader for the conservative movement and far preferred jesse helms in the wake of the failure of the 1976 campaign. So, this notion that there was, very much as there was in the Democratic Party, an intraparty struggle going on i think is critical in terms of understanding the arc of the rise of this new conservatism. Secondly, i think something thats worth noting in terms of a historical trend is the importance of gingrichs rapid rise within the leadership, as opposed to the traditional leadership ladder which had marked Democratic Movement into the leadership, and thats something that really continues to the present day. Gingrich becomes speaker, not only early in his career, but very early in terms of his own Service Within the leadership from 89 to 94, and every speaker successively, hastert, pelosi, boehner, and ryan, have very little leadership experience prior to assuming the speakership. And i think that has something to do with the way in which the caucuses or the conferences are managed and the discipline of the house itself, changes that are operationally taking place within the house. Gingrich is really the first to do that. Everyone else everyone prior to him has had years of training in terms of the leadership. And of course, thats coincident with the rise of partisanship and the struggle for control in the institution. And the third, which was alluded to, but i think is really important in terms of understanding gingrich, is how methodically he went at the building of alternative rhetorics and, you know, the publication of how to speak like newt and the course work that he really viewed the republican conference as a class to be taught and defeatist to ensure the inevitable of minority status. And of course, as late as really the summer of 1994, theres a book published about the permanent republican majority, because many people and newt, incidentally, made a point early in his career saying that everything he learned he learned as a historian that Political Science was worthless. No offense to anybody here. But i mean, his point was, it takes time to build this mentality. And hes pretty much already saw that conference as his class and his as providing the rhetorical and intellectual training to break out of this defeatist mentality. Ill just respond very quickly. I think those are excellent points. Thank you for making those. Just on each of those, i think jeff and i agree absolutely that gingrich, and something we didnt get to in our presentation, but he was willing to subvert the leadership of his own party as well as democrats, and the members of the conservative Opportunity Society sometimes liked to joke that they would do just fine, theyd succeed, except for two problems, one was the democrats, the other was the republicans. So, i think that that is true. As far as his rapid rise in leadership, thats a very good point. And part of the thing is that we havent gotten to that stage in our research. But one thing to think about is the degree to which, whether its accidents or happenstance, folks who were seen early on as likely successors in leadership either left the house or were defeated or went elsewhere, whether it was dick cheney becoming secretary of defense or jack kemp leaving and wanted to run for president. So, there is a way which gingrich benefited by other people who were expected to move up and go somewhere else instead. And third about the rhetoric, i think thats a very good point. One of the things we found doing the Archival Research in gingrichs early years is there is a memo, i think by frank luntz, about how to use language. But there are memos from the late 70s and early 80s where gingrich is talking about the same thing, the importance of language. So, i think thats an important theme that we should explore further. Yeah, id jump in. All good points. I think he clearly was as focused, if not more focused, on the republicans than he was the democrats. The democrats was the arguments was a way to change how republicans saw politics on capitol hill. And hes very worried after 84 that reagan will start compromising with democrats and undercut the argument that he wants to make about them being corrupt, and hes very he writes letters to reagan, i found in the library there, saying, you know, to administration officials, dont start compromising with them because were on this other mission. The one thing, though, is and i dont you know, bob michael is very different, and he and the leadership were not on the same page, but part of whats interesting is they do adopt a lot of his language pretty early on. I mean, the leadership puts out a big report, i cant remember the year, outlining all the ways in which the democratic majority in corrupt fashion man handles the minority. I found another i know these are in the memo, after the indiana battle culminates, wright runs into michael, who tries to alleviate the whole situation a little bit. And he writes in his diary, wright says, ran into him and noted that no, that michael said he had succumb to the koidry of noisy, young redhots in his party. Then wright said its a ploy wholly uncharacteristic of bob. Ominously, however, wright said after apologizing for his own party in the attempted coup, michael put us on notice that we no longer can rely on any gentlemans agreement that has prevailed through my 30 years in congress. And i do think the leadership is more complicit in gingrichs rise during these years, culminating with wrights downfall, which they do participate in than we think. And just on the language, he is total were in agreement, he is its not legislation he really cares about in those years. Its not Committee Work. And its not even party unity yet. Its about introducing this new language of politics and using all these techniques that were on the margins as kind of weapons to be deployed in going after the democrats. Yeah, just very quickly, just to flesh out the point about the language. I mean, i think one of the goals was to give people an alternative to vote for that was a positive, that was framed positively. So, frank luntz recommended talking about republicans as offering opportunity, they have courage, theyre principled. And on the other side, the democrats, its labor liberal welfare state. Theyre traders. Theyre sick. Theyre radicals. So, its instead of the conservatives, republicans are always against things, now there is something positive to vote for and that feeds into the contract with america. Heres what were for, not just what were against. David. Microphone coming. Oh, thank you. This is a question for matt. I was too far in the back. I heard you, but i couldnt read the one slide where you list the proposed Committee Chairs and the attempted coup against oneill. Could you put that back up . Is that possible . I dont know. I dont have control over that. Whats your question . Just curious, the republicans you said the Committee Chairs would be divided between the republicans and southern democrats. Yeah. On this theme of gingrichs friction with the Republican Leadership, were the republican committees going to be chaired by the ranking minority members or by other republicans that he liked . Yeah, thats a great question, and i havent had a chance to dig into that in detail. Ive only had time to really sort of show that this memo existed. But one of the things we do want to look at is who are these people. Thats why i wanted you to put because if theyre ranking members, it makes sense, but if theyre not, theres Something Else going on, talking about intraparty conflict. Kevin. So, weve certainly gotten the picture of Newt Gingrich as this sort of charismatic, visionary sort of guy, and that is how he got up to leadership, but was he also a wheelerdealer, a guy willing to do votetrading, logrolling, all of the sort of grubby stuff that one often associates with olderstyle rises to power . I no. I mean, thats not my read of him. I think first let me say, they mentioned how kind of strategic he was early on. Its really remarkable. I mean, part of it is, as i was telling some people, his archives are probably the best congressional archives ive ever seen in terms of the volume of material he kept and what he wrote down and what staffers wrote down. And what is stunning is to look back at the 70s memos and the early 80s and kind of see him lay out a very methodical, wellplanned idea that he does. You can read the history, you know, backwards, and you can see where he is going. And i even mentioned with the cam scam, theres a memo from 1982 where he says, what were going to do is were going to get, kind of goed the democrats into doing things to us, and then were going to turn around and show, this is exactly he said, were going to get them, oneill and wright, to take action against us and writes in his memo, they will retaliate by tightening their grip and we will go on a campaign targeting their abuse of power. I dont think he was interested in the more traditional from my read whether it was Committee Work or hes not big on legislation in the 80s. I dont think you could find i mean, obviously, hes attacking the bolen amendments, but hes not a votegatherer, or when he runs for whip in 1989 its in march of 89 and he wins, this is his entry into the leadership. He wins in large part because of what hes doing to the right and because of the arguments hes put forward. Everyones suspicious, like, how is he going to whip the vote, because he doesnt know how to do it, never done anything like that. And he talks about it. Hes cognizant of that. He says i cant do that very well, but im going to win you a majority. And thats when he calls the members, thats what hes promising them. But i dont think he is invested in those forms of kind of leadership learning or legislating. Coming over here to greg. This is an extremely interesting panel, and its kind of odd to be talking about the history of Newt Gingrich given that, well, gosh, ive lived this. So, i had two questionscomments. The first was to see if i could get more to get you guys to respond more to this, the idea that, you know, how important was gingrich to changing basically the course of american political history, and especially with respect to congress . You know, if you look at longterm trends, you know, the trend in heightened partisan polarization began before gingrich. If you look at republican identification in terms of partisan splits and the general public, in the electorate, you know, that started well before gingrich. You know, it starts to go up in the 60s. Watergate happens, it kind of plateaus. Watergate works itself out, then it kind of resumes this trend to began in the 60s. So, if ring given had not come on the scene when he did and how he did, would we essentially have ended up in the same place . I wanted to see if you could respond to that counterfactual. Second point is thinking beyond where you guys are currently in your research, is, so, he has this remarkable rise to power, right . Very rapid, transforming in many ways, maybe not all the ways he wanted, but he also has a rapid fall. And so, he gets into power, hes speaker for only a few years, and you know, first there is a coup attempt against him, right, pretty early on in his speakership, and eventually, he has to resign pretty much in disgrace in the sense that he has brought republicans out of the wilderness, but he doesnt last very long in the position that he most coveted, arguably. So, i wondered if i could get you to comment on how we might understand his decline and fall in the context of his rise, in the sense of did he essentially sew the seeds of his own fall by the way that he rose to power . You guys want to go first or do you want me . Ill go. Go ahead. Ill go first really quickly. Thanks, greg. Those are both great questions. Were still in terms of where we are in the research, were not yet prepared to answer that first question, and were approaching it cautiously because, certainly, at the aggregate, theres plenty of evidence to suggest that there were trends, as you mentioned, of Congress Moving in a more partisan fashion, even before he was elected, and even when he first was, which would be odd if his First Congress hes making the house more partisan when hes a backbencher. So, at this point, were sort of approaching that carefully and not prepared, unless, jeff, you have an answer. Im afraid to answer that definitively. Ill pass on that. Ill answer it yeah, ill pass it in a second, but in terms of the rapid fall, or do you want to talk about that . Are you talking about me . Yeah, were going backwards. Theres still a gap around 1985. Ill throw in my two cents. I think part of it was the point by kevin, that if gingrich is not a dealmaker, right, how do you serve as speaker, because its all about making deals and compromise in order to legislate. So, part of it could be that he doesnt have the skill set, but i think there might be other things going on there as well. Im comfortable with that. I think the other thing to keep in mind is that, you know, in the context of coming up with this new language and this new approach, the media are changing very rapidly. Mid1990s, were getting msnbc, were getting fox news. Hed already found a way to kind of exploit cspan and cnn from the early 80s, so that environment was changing around him as well, the internet, 24hour news cycle and so forth. So, his strength really in rising to power was his vision and his ability to use the media to get his message out there. So, thats part of it. I dont want to say thats the whole thing, but you know, the time in history is an issue for him, i think. To greg, i think your first question i think every time ive given a paper at this conference, i get that question or version of it, which i think is just part of, its structural disciplines. And obviously, im always like, well, both are true, the easy answer, and you know, on capitol hill, its all about the structural changes and the development of partisanship. But at the same time, i dont know, there are certain players who really matter. And in some ways, writing this book is convincing me of that even more. And both he and some of his influence on the hill. And then finally, the act of bringing down the speaker was a pretty big deal. And so, you have all these forces pushing partisanship and institution supporting it, but that could still move in different directions, and i dont know how you kind of quantify it, but something really happened, i think, when gingrich was there, and he was a leader and a shaper and a mover of this new partisanship. Im not sure it would have been quite the same without him. I think hes that significant. And the second one i would say, look, theres part of him thats selfdestructive. And you know, here he is attacking jim wright for things hes essentially doing at the same time. His personal relations are obviously, you know, in the middle of the clinton impeachment. This is part of who he is. But also, equally important, part of what he does is create a legislative environment, or this generation of republicans helped create an environment, as did the watergate babies in the 70s. Its just less stable, where leaders can be brought down. And so, its not surprising he can fall, too. And i really think thats an important part of the kind of congress he creates, and its not surprising, weve seen a lot of leaders kind of fall from power. The ethics rules are just an example of a mechanism put into place where you can use those against someone with the greatest authority pretty effectively. Yes, in the back. Microphones coming. There you go. Yeah, theres one word that julian i think it was julian used, that has not been picked up on, which was antiestablishment. And the other word thats not been mentioned at all is populist, probably for good reason. But i wonder how much thats at the center of this as well. Carter, i think carter is the first president ial candidate to win by running against washington as an outsider a long time. Obviously, weve seen this come now to some side that weve seen this epitomized now. But i wonder, julian, your argument that thats who gingrich is and thats the rhetoric he uses, is this notion of antiestablishment, which begins when hes a graduate student. Ive actually read his dissertation. And youve explained how it is part of his life as a faculty member. This notion of himself as an outsider and this antiestablishment rhetoric, antiestablishment politics, the rhetorical strategy that youve described is basically, especially for a historian, an odd hostility to facts or odd agnosticism to facts, which is also part of an antiestablishment perspective. The republican world that hes fighting is, in essence, the old Percy Rockefeller republican establishment, and i mean both rockefellers. So, i was just kind of curious as to whether or not this antiestablishmentarianism is much more central than were hearing, although i think we are getting it from julian to some extent, and getting lost in some of the search for the structural issues. Is this really the main spine of whats happening during this period . I think, for me, it is, and its absolutely essential, much more than him being a classic rightwing conservative. I dont see him defining himself that way, and i think hes not as tied to some of the issues bubbling up in the conservative movement, although he aligns with them. Its really that rhetoric exactly. Some of its personal. Hes literally a person who spent much of his early life moving from one place to another. He was never rooted anywhere. In harrisburg, hes very attuned. He would spend every summer there with his family to kind of white, workingclass republicans who nixon was appealing to in that area. Hes very attuned to watergate and the vietnam atmosphere and what thats doing in american politics. And so, yeah, i use it. Its front and center. I must say, i wrote the draft of this book, and really, that theme before the Trump Campaign was successful, and its kind of easy now to see, oh, heres the trajectory. But i think that was the essence of who he was and why was t was an appealing argument when democrats had controlled the house since 1954. And i would add, also had not cleaned up their house. Its not that democrats were pristine, and he kind of exploits a lot of areas where democrats didnt reform the institution after the 70s, including campaign finance, to pursue that theme. Any other questions . Well, great. Thank you very much to the panelists, to matt. [ applause ] say a quick thank you to matt, to jeff, and to julian for your excellent presentations, and to laurel and mike for your discussions. This has been a pleasure to work with you this morning. Arizona senator jeff flake spoke to the local chamber of commerce in gilbert, arizona, last night, talking about his new book, conscious of a conservative, in which he calls on republicans to stand up to President Trump if he is damaging the gop. Senator flake has been a vocal critic of some of President Trumps actions. Also, questions on policy and the current political climate, thats at 9 00 on cspan. This week on cspan. Tonight at 10 00, live coverage of President Trumps rally in phoenix. Coverage begins at 10 00 p. M. Eastern or on the cspan radio app. Theres more American History tv coming up next with a look at watergate. Among the speakers, part of the select committee tasked with investigating the watergate breakin. He joins congressional staffers to talk about their work and some of the parallels between president Richard Nixon and the Current Trump administration. Moderated by leslie staal of cbs news, this discussion is just under an hour and a half. Hello. Hello, everybody. Im gordon friedman, and elizabeth and i [ applause ]
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