On Newt Gingrich’s influence on U.S. politics, Munk Debate participant Andrew Sullivan says Donald Trump’s election is the former House Speaker’s ‘final triumph in dragging this country into a miasma of bitterness and acrimony.’TODD HEISLER/The New York Times
He rode to power on a populist backlash against a Democratic president and embraced a scorched-earth political style that his opponents say has destroyed all semblance of civilized debate.
Donald Trump? Try Newt Gingrich. Given the parallels – from pugilistic political style to anti-establishment attacks – it is perhaps no surprise the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives emerged as one of the U.S. President's earliest and most vocal defenders among Washington's political class.
And he will make the case for Mr. Trump at a debate on American democracy at Roy Thomson Hall on Thursday in Toronto. The event, part of the Munk Debates series, posits that Mr. Trump has pushed his country's democratic system into its worst crisis in a generation. Arguing for this proposition will be conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan and E.J. Dionne, the Washington Post columnist and Brookings Institution fellow. Mr. Gingrich, along with Wall Street Journal editorial writer Kimberley Strassel, will argue against.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Mr. Gingrich explains his symbiosis with the U.S. President.
"We're both clearly outside the establishment," Mr. Gingrich says. "No respectable part of the establishment would ever allow either of us in. Don't you agree?"
Given this shared self-image, there is a certain irony in the fact that much of Mr. Gingrich's defence of Mr. Trump is predicated on the argument that he is actually not that far outside of presidential precedent or prerogative.
On Mr. Trump's repeated provocations of nuclear-armed North Korea via Twitter, for instance, Mr. Gingrich points to Ronald Reagan's famous hot-mic moment in 1984, when he was recorded joking that he would "outlaw Russia" and "we begin bombing in five minutes." (Mr. Gingrich theorizes the Great Communicator might have staged the whole thing as a way of sending a message to the leaders of the former Soviet Union that he wasn't afraid to take them on, as Mr. Trump is doing with North Korea. "One never knows," he says.)
On Mr. Trump's decision to fire James Comey over his investigation into the Kremlin's election meddling, Mr. Gingrich argues that as chief executive of the government, Mr. Trump has the constitutional right to turf the FBI director when he chooses.
And on Mr. Trump's bombastic approach to politics – which has included publicly denigrating political opponents, his own cabinet, GOP congressional leaders, the mayor of Puerto Rico's hurricane-ravaged capital and various members of the public – Mr. Gingrich brings out a list of comparisons.
"Theodore Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson were relentlessly willing to confront the elites. Lincoln, of course, fought an entire civil war over defining the nature of America," he says.
Can you really equate Mr. Trump's Twitter tantrums with the reformist agendas of some of the country's most effective presidents?
Mr. Gingrich concedes Mr. Trump sometimes goes too far. But he doesn't see how it reaches the level of a democratic crisis.
"I don't defend him on a number of his tweets. I mean, some of them are not very smart," he said. "But on the other hand, it's hard to go from being unwise to being unconstitutional."
He also concedes Mr. Trump has struggled to push a legislative agenda through the U.S. Congress, but contends the President's move to undo hundreds of business, environmental and labour regulations is a major achievement in establishment-beating.
Mr. Sullivan dismisses the suggestion Mr. Trump's attacks on all and sundry serve any sort of greater purpose.
In eight months in power, Mr. Trump has failed to repeal former Democratic president Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, a top GOP campaign promise; not yet pushed a tax-cut package through Congress; or implemented most of his promises to toughen border security. And despite his pledges on the campaign trail to dial back U.S. foreign interventionism, the opposite appears to be happening with his threats of going to war in Korea, Mr. Sullivan says.
"If you believe he has to violate all these norms in order to get something done, you then have to ask, what has he been able to achieve? The answer is almost nothing," Mr. Sullivan says in an interview. "Yeah, his voters wanted him to shake things up. He hasn't. He's undermined core principles of liberal democracy, but achieved nothing."
Mr. Sullivan also rejects historical equivalencies. Previous presidents, for instance, lied to cover up scandals or bent the truth about their policies, but Mr. Sullivan contends Mr. Trump's repeated falsehoods – from claiming his inauguration crowd was larger than Mr. Obama's to insisting that his proposed tax cuts would benefit only the middle class – are more flagrant than what has come before.
"We're not talking about the usual political spin. We're talking about saying outright that things you can see with your own eyes do not exist," he says. "You may say this is amusing or crazy, and I think it's a mixture of the two, but it's deeply corrupting of our social and political norms."
Mr. Sullivan says Mr. Gingrich opened the door to Mr. Trump with a no-holds-barred approach to political combat during his time at the helm of the GOP's House caucus in the 1990s. Mr. Gingrich pushed the federal government into a shutdown over a budget dispute with the White House, led the push to have former president Bill Clinton impeached for lying about an extramarital affair and described the Democrats as nothing less than "the enemy of normal Americans."
"This was new in Washington. It was fanatical and radical and a destructive force that Gingrich helped galvanize and … made it harder and harder for anybody on both sides to have any sort of constructive conversation," Mr. Sullivan says. "Trump is really Gingrich's final triumph in dragging this country into a miasma of bitterness and acrimony."
Mr. Gingrich also had a fondness for pitching bizarre projects. As a lawmaker in the 1980s and a presidential candidate in 2012, he proposed building a permanent colony on the moon and annexing the celestial body as the 51st U.S. state. During the latter campaign, he also proposed replacing school janitors with children from poor families as a cost-saving measure.
Mr. Gingrich chuckles when reminded of his colonization pitch: On the day of his Globe interview, he has just attended the first meeting of the U.S. National Space Council, revived by the Trump administration after a 25-year dormancy.
On Mr. Sullivan's criticism that Mr. Gingrich paved the way for the President by coarsening public debate, the former Speaker reaches for a Trumpian stock phrase.
"You want to drain the swamp, you have to understand that the alligators won't be happy. Sullivan is an alligator," he says. "This debate is going to be a lot of fun."
Adrian Morrow