Gingrich’s Political Dance Keeps Him in the Spotlight : Campaign: Speaker helps fuel interest in White House bid. Move may enhance his stature, expand his options.

Audacity has long been a Newt Gingrich trademark, but even by his standards, the provocative dance he has been tapping around the question of whether he will run for President is extraordinary.

Amid widespread speculation about his ambitions, the House Speaker and his associates prefer to portray Gingrich as the passive recipient of grass-roots enthusiasm and the victim of a hyperactive press corps spoiling for a fight for the GOP nomination. In fact, many of his closest associates go so far as to say it would be a terrible idea for the Georgia Republican to actually run for the presidency.

On Tuesday, when asked at a meeting of business people whether he is running, Gingrich responded: “No. Now that settles that, right?”

Probably not, given that Gingrich himself has done more than anyone to fan the flames of interest in his political future. Today he plans to deliver a speech here to a group of business people from Iowa, where the presidential campaign’s first voting takes place next February. Then, on Friday, he is scheduled to launch a four-day swing through New Hampshire, site of the nation’s first primary. It is a trip replete with helicopters, a press filing center, chartered buses and events aimed at GOP activists--in short, all the trappings of a full-fledged presidential effort.

Gingrich’s maneuvering has already disrupted the stately waltz of the declared GOP presidential candidates. But there is more in his actions than mere mischief or even the exertions of a considerable ego. Whether his steps end up leading to a full-fledged try for the nomination or just an elaborate tease, Gingrich’s efforts to promote himself have already amounted to a remarkable feat of self-aggrandizement.

For most of this year, Gingrich has stumbled from one political controversy to another and racked up high disapproval ratings in public opinion polls even as he has led House Republicans to a string of legislative victories. Now people are talking about him as a presidential contender in ways that would have been unimaginable as recently as two months ago.

Many of Gingrich’s closest associates dismiss out of hand the notion that he will actually run for President. Some have warned him that a serious run would be a major mistake, a long-shot gamble that could jeopardize his hold on the powerful office of House Speaker.

“I’m throwing cold water on it,” said former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), one of Gingrich’s closest allies who is backing Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) for the GOP nomination.

Gingrich himself has generally been coy. And clearly, having his name bandied about serves his own multiple purposes. Gingrich’s heightened national stature may help him gain leverage within Congress, where his agenda is being slowed in the Senate. All the publicity can’t hurt sales of his forthcoming book, which he will be promoting in a 25-city tour. And the speculation may help him shape the terms of debate in a presidential campaign where Gingrich’s more ardently conservative wing of the Republican Party lacks a clear and strong voice.

“The truth is that I can have a lot bigger impact on the national debate, and I can get a lot more messages across, and we can have a lot clearer communication about where we think America has to go as long as all of you think that I might or might not do something,” Gingrich told reporters this week.

This sort of maneuvering, while far from ordinary, is vintage Gingrich. He has made a career of bold power grabs, grand political gestures and positioning himself to move into vacuums he helped create.

Such moves--especially his role in helping the GOP win control of Congress in the 1994 elections--have made Gingrich a hero among conservative Republicans inside Congress and out. Inevitably, he has been asked about his presidential ambitions. But Gingrich has been resolutely evasive, ever more coy as the questions got asked ever more frequently.

Asked in early May if he had any plans to run for President, Gingrich said: “Look, I might. . . . It’s impossible coming from Georgia to issue a Shermanesque statement” that would flatly rule out a run.

More recently, when asked what it would take to get him into the race, Gingrich said in an interview with Business Week: “Seven million people show up Tuesday morning with a draft petition and beg me.”

Now he is tantalizing his admirers with his trip to New Hampshire, a tiny state few politicians pay attention to without the presidency in mind. Gingrich’s schedule is so jammed--fund-raisers for the state’s two GOP House members, elbow-rubbing events with the state’s political pooh-bahs and its plebes, TV interviews and the like--that he has scheduled seven separate helicopter trips just to keep up.

“There has been more advance work on this than on a presidential trip,” said Tom Rath, a Concord, N.H., lawyer and longtime political activist who is an adviser to former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander’s presidential campaign. “It is going to have all the trappings of a major political event, which is what his people are interested in having.”

Gingrich’s staff insists that the visit, initially billed as a vacation to watch moose with Rep. Bill Zeliff (R-N.H.), is the kind of party-building tour he does routinely for his House colleagues. But they acknowledge that he clearly revels in the imputed presidential significance.

All his disclaimers notwithstanding, Gingrich has discussed his presidential prospects among his broad network of associates, admirers and other hangers-on.

One of the most enthusiastic promoters of a Gingrich candidacy seems to be William J. Bennett, the former education secretary and conservative activist who himself has national political ambitions. Bennett encouraged Gingrich when the two men and their families vacationed together in Florida over the Memorial Day weekend, according to sources close to both.

“We are in a politically revolutionary situation,” Bennett told reporters Tuesday. “Ironically, none of the people running is part of the revolution. Gingrich is the leader of it.”

GOP strategist William Kristol suggests that Gingrich may be able to fill a vacuum that many conservatives see in the GOP presidential field. “I speak to a lot of Republican audiences and the person in whom they are most interested, that enthuses them the most is Newt Gingrich,” said Kristol, who theoretically is advising the campaign of conservative Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.). “Voters always ask: ‘What have you done for me lately?’ Newt Gingrich has done more for Republican primary voters than anyone else.”

Before Gingrich could move into the fray, Kristol and others argue, Dole’s candidacy would have to falter badly and Gramm’s would have to fail.

Even then, Gingrich would face major obstacles.

His assets may be unmatched by many politicians, but so too are the political liabilities of a freewheeling thinker who seems unwilling to edit his thoughts for political consumption. Controversy dogged his first stormy months in power, as he talked about sending poor children to orphanages and giving them laptop computers. He fired his choice for House historian after she drew fire for criticizing a course on the Holocaust. Faced with criticism that he was cashing in on his newfound fame and power, he backed down from accepting a $4.5-million book advance. The House Ethics Committee remains awash in complaints against him.

Although he dismisses the complaints as politically motivated, Gingrich has recently severed his links to some of the activities under scrutiny.

Out of all this emerges a vivid political character who is adored by true-believing conservatives of the GOP but reviled by other parts of the general-election crowd. At the end of April, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that 31% of those surveyed viewed Gingrich positively and 36% negatively--compared with 23% who were negative about Dole.

“His negatives are still substantial,” said Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-Mich.), a Gingrich ally. “He has to prove himself a little more to bring that down.”

And some worry that Gingrich, by playing to adoring crowds, may make it harder for Dole and other candidates to inspire the party faithful.

For now, at least, Dole partisans brusquely dismiss the notion.

“We’re not concerned about Newt Gingrich going to New Hampshire,” said former Granite State Sen. Warren B. Rudman, obviously impatient with the media attention being showered on the trip. “We are delighted he is going to New Hampshire.”