The two facets of the Republican candidate – elder statesman versus sharp-tongued firebrand – often seem to be warring in full view, writes TRIP GABRIELin Fairfax, Virginia
NOT LONG ago Newt Gingrich, who is seeking the Republican Party’s nomination as its presidential candidate, placed a call to golf legend Jack Nicklaus, seeking advice on how to pace himself. Nicklaus, according to the Gingrich campaign, recalled that when he was on the pro tour, it was possible to pour a lot of energy into a tournament, but impossible to sustain the effort weekly without respites.
And so last weekend, with a little more than two weeks to go before Iowans cast the first votes in the Republican nominating contest, as other hopefuls hopped on buses and flights to meet voters, Gingrich sat in the fourth row of a high-school auditorium while his wife, Callista, played the French horn in a Christmas concert with the Fairfax community band. At precisely 8pm, as news ricocheted across Twitter that the Des Moines Registernewspaper was giving its influential endorsement to Mitt Romney, Gingrich put on his reading glasses – to examine the concert programme.
In the years since Gingrich was driven from power by members of his own party fed up with his divisiveness and lack of self-control, he has become a grandfather, converted to Catholicism and happily remarried a much younger woman, who turned him into a self-described “band groupie” who carries her horn case to concerts.
Family members and close advisers say this is a new Newt, a man whose late-life maturity and mellowness help explain why Gingrich, whom conservative commentator Peggy Noonan recently portrayed in the Wall Street Journalas a human hand grenade, has succeeded in methodically rebuilding his presidential prospects and avoided predictions of self-destruction.
“I’ve had 12 years where I wasn’t in the pressure cooker, and I was able to reflect,” Gingrich said earlier last Saturday after sitting for two hours next to his wife outside the food court at Mount Vernon, Virginia, as she signed copies of her children’s book for buyers who, almost as an afterthought, shook the hand of the Republican presidential hopeful leading most polls.
“This is somebody who has a very different attitude about things,” says Robert Walker, a former Republican House member who has long been close to Gingrich. “The people sitting around waiting for him to blow up are waiting in vain.”
But scepticism runs deep about the newness of this Newt. In endorsing Romney, the Registerdismissed Gingrich as "undisciplined". The conservative National Reviewwrote that, as speaker of the House, "he combined incendiary rhetoric with irresolute action", an assessment shared by some of his Republican colleagues from that period.
The two facets of Gingrich – the elder statesman who swears off negative campaigning versus the still sharp-tongued firebrand who enthrals many voters – often seem to be warring in full public view. He prefaced an answer at a debate in Iowa last week by saying he was “editing” his words so as not to come off as intemperate.
Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the Republican Party of New Hampshire, compares Gingrich to a recovering alcoholic who has recently left rehab. “Yes, he could be disciplined this week, but that doesn’t mean he won’t fall off the wagon or have a relapse next week,” he says. “That’s the concern a lot of people who respect Gingrich have.”
Friends and close associates call that view a caricature, and they point to the many ways Gingrich’s life changed when he was forced from the speakership, resigning from the House in 1999 amid widespread perceptions of grandiosity and a tendency to self-destruct.
“He was in a very heady position as speaker, and then he lost power and that was a very humbling experience,” says Rick Tyler, a former aide who began working with Gingrich in that period.
Leaving the House led to a period of soul-searching and ultimately Gingrich’s conversion to Catholicism in 2009.
“He has definitely changed,” says Tyler. “Newt is more grounded, more thoughtful and sees things less from ‘I’m going to change the world’ than seeing himself as subject to his creator.”
His conversion followed years of attending Mass to hear his wife sing in the choir of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. He was a familiar figure reading in the cafeteria or a pew during the 90-minute choir rehearsals before the noon Mass.
“It’s a time to slow down, absorb and reflect,” says Gingrich. “The basilica is an extraordinary church. The music is magnificent. The sense of being absorbed is a very, very powerful part of why I am, I think, as comfortable as I am.”
Detractors point to the hypocrisy of Gingrich conducting a lengthy extramarital affair with his future wife, then a congressional aide, while pursuing the impeachment of former US president Bill Clinton for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
But despite an un-storybook-like beginning, Gingrich’s marriage to the former Callista Bisek in 2000 has, by all accounts, transformed him.
She “has a remarkably positive and calming effect on Newt, who is a very happy man”, says Kellyanne Conway, a polling expert working for the campaign who has long known Gingrich. “Newt is a 68-year-old church-going grandfather of two, who is patient and gracious.”
Of course, “68-year-old church-going grandfather” is also code to voters that Gingrich, on his third marriage, is unlikely to have a fourth.
Jackie Gingrich Cushman, one of his two adult daughters, says Callista has made him less self-absorbed. “He can now share his calamari appetiser,” she says.
Becoming a grandfather was an emotional milestone, says Cushman, the mother of Robert (10) and Maggie (12), whom Gingrich often credits on the campaign trail as his “debate coaches”, reminding him to smile and speak slowly.
Cushman says her father is “more fully present” with his grandchildren than he was for her and her older sister, Kathy Lubbers, during his 20-year climb to power. “When he’s with them, he’s willing to listen to endless quizzes about Greek mythology or spend all night being beaten in chess,” she says.
Even the game of golf, which he took up at his wife’s suggestion, has had an impact, close associates say. “I think the golf course gives him a chance to say, ‘I’m not going to think about anything right now’ – that’s a way to decompress,” says Tyler.
But as evidence that Gingrich still lacks discipline, his detractors point to recent controversial remarks about child janitors, Palestinians as an “invented” people and a call for federal judges to answer to Congress for “anti-American” rulings, which legal experts on the right and left say could cause chaos.
Sometimes the two sides of Gingrich emerge in close proximity. In New Hampshire last week, the new Newt promised to take the high road with a nonconfrontational campaign for the nomination, telling a huge crowd one evening that the next morning he would “release a letter” ordering his staff and consultants “to run a positive campaign”. But hours earlier, he said Romney should give back money he made “bankrupting companies and laying off employees”. Asked about a charge levelled by rival Michele Bachmann, he shot back: “Have you been to Concord?”
“No,” said the reporter who asked, seeming puzzled.
It was a reference to Bachmann’s misplacing the start of the American Revolution up the road in Concord, New Hampshire. In Gingrich’s voice was the sneer of the professor of American history he once was and, it seemed, a glimpse of the old Newt.
"Go to Concord sometime," Gingrich said acidly, "and I'll talk to you later about Mrs Bachmann." – (New York Timesservice)