In Newt's view, nobody else has either questions or answers. Democrats can't give up their rote contempt for the free market that makes everything possible for most Americans. They're willing to cook the golden goose to stuff themselves one last time. The Republicans are technically incompetent and dysfunctional, like a business that can't recognize its market and enrages the customers of its market share. This encourages Democrats to say goofy things.
Worse, when the politicians are incompetent, it logically follows that the government they fashion will be incompetent, and the public reaction is usually not to fix it but to let the politicians make the government bigger. That's why almost no Republican looks to next year with anticipation. The Republicans, Newt says, could win if they run against what he calls "the Oprah ticket" -- Hillary and Obama. But Bill (and Hillary) Clinton, it occurs to me, did not get to the pinnacle of politics by making dumb choices.
For all his put-downs and put-ons, the former speaker sounds best in the heat and light of his moment at the podium. Follow-through is not always the mark of the successful campaigner. His stunning triumph with the "Contract with America" in 1994 turned swiftly to ashes. Now he's pushing a 21st-century "Contract with America," requiring not only a change in government policy, but a change in public attitudes. The debate stuck in red vs. blue has to become what he calls "the red, white and blue."
He brandishes a handout of polling data, available to candidates of either partisan stripe, emphasizing that 80 percent of Americans agree there's a desperate need to strengthen and revitalize the nation's core values. Like the college professor he was and is once more, Newt insists this means restoring pride in being an American, teaching what American citizenship and American history actually mean. "First you win the argument," he says, quoting Maggie Thatcher, "and then you win the vote." But the devil, as they say, is in the details. We have few details and lots of devils. The former speaker is eager to tell you who they are.