Newt Gingrich, Ideas Man

Lots of talk about Newt Gingrich, coming off his formal declaration as a candidate for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination. Newt Gingrich, the man with the ideas.

Dan Blaz has told me so in the Washington Post:

Still, Gingrich brings to the race an unparalleled record in his party as someone who has remained in the forefront of the public policy debate over a span of decades. If he has lacked discipline in other areas, the one consistency in his public career is a devotion to the intersection of ideas and politics. He has made himself a force in whatever role he has played: as a backbencher, as House leader, and for more than a decade as a politician without office or official portfolio.

Through intellect and ambition, Gingrich has kept himself in the middle of public policy debates on health care, education, energy and foreign affairs. “Newt’s been the Republican Party’s main idea man for close to a generation,” said Terry Holt, a Republican strategist who closely observed Gin­grich as speaker. “This is a guy who brings unlimited energy and creative thinking to a race that needs new ideas.”

And I woke up to Mara Liasson telling me much that same, on NPR's Morning Edition Sunday this weekend:

Newt Gingrich is an intellectual force in the party. He has the ability to set the terms of the debate, although there are questions about whether he has the discipline for this kind of campaign. And there're questions about whether his personal life and his three marriages will hurt him in his bid. But he certainly is an idea machine and I think that's the role he will play.

Well, by now it's all over the press that the Former Speaker of the House is having a little bit of trouble articulating his ideas about health care reform. First he goes on NBC's Meet the Press and distanced himself from a House GOP plan to make cuts to Medicare, calling it “too big a jump" for the American people.

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Then, the backtracking.  After a lot of criticism from fellow Republicans.

After Gingrich criticized the plan during his appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, his spokesman Rick Tyler attempted to clarify his remarks, saying there is "little daylight" between Gingrich and Ryan when it comes to Medicare reform.

"Newt would fully support Ryan if it were not compulsory," Tyler told the Weekly Standard. "We need to design a better system that people will voluntarily move to. That is a major difference in design but not substance."

Something that did not get a lot of press, was Newt Gingrich's interview this last Sunday with Jorge Ramos on his Univision show Al Punto. Read the interview. It's interesting. He certainly intellectualizes in some areas -- particularly in talking about comprehensive immigration reform and the Dream Act -- while yet coming short of his own ideas. But, he does seem to have one idea down. Giving undocumented immigrants a status short of legal citizenship. The emphasis is mine:

First, somebody who’s been here 20 years, somebody who’s been here 20 years and is married and has three kids and has been paying taxes and lived a totally peaceful life and is a citizen – but by the way they came here 20 years ago outside the law. We got to find the way to routinize and get them in the law without necessarily getting them on a path to citizenship. Now there ought to be a way to do that. And one of the things I’m looking at, and this may come as a surprise to you, is in World War II we had a selective service board where every local community could apply common sense to the draft process. We may want to think about a citizen board that can actually look at things and decide, is this a person that came in two months ago and doesn’t nearly have any ties here? Or is this a person who clearly is integrated into the society but unfortunately has been undocumented, therefore, we have to rethink how we are approaching them.

Gives "separate but equal" a new meaning.

In reality, there is a big difference between being an intellectual, and actually having ideas.  Practical ideas.  Ideas that can implemented.  Particularly ideas that can have an impact in the public policy arena.  Newt Gingrich is a trained academic.  A PhD in history and former college professor.  And as such, he's not too bad at tearing apart other people's ideas. Deconstructing the ideas of others.  Being a public intellectual, of sorts.  Time will tell whether he can formulate and articulate his own ideas, particularly public policy imperatives.  And whether they can hold through a Presidential nomination campaign, where he is sure to get sliced and diced by the Republican opposition -- particularly when he is perceived of as not towing the party line.