***
In an interview on CNBC, Gingrich recently emphasized his close identification with the nation’s 40th president: “I’ve done a movie on Ronald Reagan called ‘Rendezvous With Destiny.’ Callista and I did.
We’ve done a book on Ronald Reagan. You know I campaigned with Reagan. I first met Reagan in ’74. I’m very happy to talk about Ronald Reagan.”
Just like when Newt went to the House floor during the Gipper’s second White House term and declared the president’s Soviet policy a “failure.” Here is what Gingrich said: “Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing and without a dramatic, fundamental change in strategy will continue to fail. … The burden of the failure frankly must be placed first upon President Reagan.”
This was after Gingrich, as reported in the Congressional Record, had found Reagan responsible for our national “decay”: “Beyond the obvious indicators of decay, the fact is that President Reagan has lost control of the national agenda.” Students of Newt-speak will recognize that by “decay,”Gingrich was generally referring to factors such as crime, illegitimate births and illiteracy.
These blatant contradictions between what Congressman Gingrich actually said at the time about President Reagan and what Candidate Gingrich now offers as fictitious reminiscences of his unwavering allegiance to Reagan remind me of one of the former speaker’s own broadsides against Washington, D.C. “In this cold and ruthless city,” he once said, “the center of hypocrisy is Capitol Hill.” Newt Gingrich is quite obviously an expert on both subjects.
****
Presidents should not get automatic support, not even from members of their own party, but they have a right to that support when they are under a vicious partisan assault. Today it is fair to look back and ask who had it right: Gingrich, who backed away from and criticized Republican presidents, or those chief executives, who were making difficult and consequential decisions on national security. Bush on the surge and Reagan on the Soviet empire were tough, courageous — and right. Newt Gingrich in retrospect seems less the visionary than the politician who refused the party’s leader loyal support on grounds that history has proved were simply wrong.