‘Frontline’s’ ‘Newt’ an Insightful March

The first time this reviewer heard of Newt Gingrich was in a 1983 story in the left-of-center journal New Options, affiliated with the fledgling Green political movement. In it, Gingrich was identified as a “Green” politician for his concerns about futurist ideas, decentralized government and concern for animals. Indeed, not many years before, Gingrich had run--and lost--for Congress as a liberal, environmentalist Republican.

What the author of that article, Mark Satin, didn’t know was that by the early 1980s Gingrich had begun planning an intellectual war on liberalism, studying military tacticians through history and linking liberals with welfare and every single ill of American society.

What journalist Peter Boyer’s “Frontline” report, “The Long March of Newt Gingrich,” suggests is that Gingrich may really be a liberal deep inside, but runs as a conservative because it wins votes. By his third, victorious try at Georgia’s 6th congressional seat, Gingrich had strategically dropped his liberal and environmentalist allies and attacked his GOP opponent as left-wing. In war, what wins works, and for Gingrich, what works is playing to the right.

Boyer’s suggestion is burrowed inside this fine biographical psycho-history, and it may be one of the most remarkable insights yet about the country’s most controversial politico.

A conservative radical tied to corporate interests wouldn’t seem a likely fan of “The Magnificent Seven,” and yet Gingrich loves the fable of poor folk and tough, altruistic gunslingers beating off a desperado gang. A politician promoting “family values” wouldn’t seem a likely activist against censorship of nude photos, yet Gingrich was just that during his time at Tulane University.

Indeed, Boyer finds that the parts of Gingrich don’t add up to the whole politician of today. His clashes with his military-minded stepfather turned him off to the military; no one who recalls his days as a college professor remembers him attacking big government or the welfare state. What they do recall is that he wanted to find a place in the history books.

So is Gingrich’s “revolution” nothing more than the vehicle for his goal, which from 1978 was to be House speaker? Is it a means of waging war for power, just as the efforts of his political action committee, GOPAC, were to both promote his own political donors and train future GOP candidates? Is it all a game?

It could be, which would make Gingrich like most politicians, rather than the guy his professorial colleagues used to dub “Mr. Truth.” The very ethical charges he used against then-House Speaker Jim Wright--and brought Gingrich to national attention--are now being used against him.

Boyer finds this poetically ironic, and Gingrich may fall in the very war he tried to master. But he still may win--and winning is everything.

* “The Long March of Newt Gingrich” airs at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.