Books Boston Sunday Globe JULY 5, 2020 Books Bonfire of the Republicans
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N8 Books Boston Sunday Globe JULY 5, 2020 Books Bonfire of the Republicans Lookingbackatthe incendiary politics of the ’90s BURNING DOWN BY DAVID M. SHRIBMAN THE HOUSE: GLOBE CORRESPONDENT Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a ewt Gingrich was a white tornado Speaker, and the that roared through Washington at Rise of the New the end of the 20th century, blowing Republican the roof off the Capitol, rearranging Party the furniture of the House, upending By Julian E. the customs of American public life. Zelizer There was life in Washington circles Penguin Press, before Gingrich and then there was 356 pages, $30 Nlife after Gingrich, and there is little resemblance between the two. He changed the tone and timbre of American civic life. He introduced character assassination into con- temporary American politics. He thrust ideological dis- cipline onto party politics. He forced a House speaker from office. He repelled the accommodationist impulse that had existed for decades from the Republican play- book. He ended the Democrats’ 40-year rule of the House. He won the speakership. He also left the speak- ership in disgrace. Julian E. Zelizer has taken on the task of describing, examining, and analyzing the rebel from Georgia. Zeliz- er holds an endowed chair in history at Princeton but writes like a journalist. (A whisper to the faculty lounge: That is a compliment, not a disparagement.) His book has color and forward momentum. His story has drama and life lessons. His subject is, depending on your point of view, either heroic or odious. One way or another, no one can argue with Zelizer’s thesis that Gingrich changed American politics. “The new Washington was rougher, less stable,” he writes. “In the new Washington, almost anything was permissible. In partisan politics, it was almost impossi- ble to go too far.” Zelizer has the great insight of comprehending Ging- rich’s great insight: that the post-Watergate “reforms” calling for greater attention to ethical issues, greater ISABELLE CARDINAL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE ZELIZER, Page N9 Our imaginary BIBLIOPHILES friend Poetry, politics, and ‘Candy Crush’ Twitter’s favorite BY AMY SUTHERLAND | GLOBE CORRESPONDENT aristocrat tells her story n “Pelosi,” longtime political reporter Molly Ball charts the path that led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to become one of the most By Amy Pedulla powerful people in American politics. Ball has covered Washington GLOBE CORRESPONDENT politics for Politico, The Atlantic, and currently for Time magazine. “I’m trying to be quiet and gather strength to be a I voice of encouragement for you loons, who somehow She is an analyst for CNN and a regular on the PBS program need me and somehow found me,” tweeted Duchess “Washington Week.” She lives in northern Virginia with her family. Goldblatt in early June. If you don’t know who Duchess Goldblatt is: jump in BOOKS: What are you reading current- which is about millennial politicians. the pool. The water’s warm. Nobody else does, either. ly? The writing is so evocative and the de- This month sees the publication of “Becoming Duch- BALL: To be totally honest, between scriptions of people are really fun. The ess Goldblatt,” an anonymously working from home, home-schooling other one is Olga Khazan’s “Weird,” penned memoir chronicling the BECOMING three kids, and doing a virtual book which is a social science-y book about conception and history of Goldb- DUCHESS tour, I haven’t had much time for how being different can be an asset in latt the everyman’s 81-year old GOLDBLATT reading. I’ve been digging into the life. She also writes about being a therapist, self-help guru, inspira- By Anonymous new Hilary Mantel, “The Mirror & the nerdy Russian Jewish immigrant in tional tweeter, and, as Duchess Houghton Light.” I love her. I’m not usually into Texas. She’s hilarious. would have it, “One of the most im- Mifflin Harcourt, historical fiction, but her trilogy tran- portant voices in American letters.” 240 pages, $24 scends genre. I like good books regard- BOOKS: Do you read many books The Duchess was born in the less of genre. I’m not into science fic- about politics? wake of the writer’s own painful di- tion but I love Margaret Atwood, and BALL: I actually don’t. I mostly read lit- vorce and series of rather traumat- a few years ago I got into the South erary fiction and nonfiction. Politics is ic family events (raising a son as a American writer Jose Saramago, my day job and I need an escape but I single parent, losing her father to terminal illness, the whose books are kind of science fic- did read Ezra Klein’s “Why We’re Po- disappearance of her troubled older brother). After the tion-y. larized” just before the pandemic hit. divorce, the writer discusses getting onto social media That is phenomenal. with a friend (we can assume this conversation hap- BOOKS: What was your last best read pened in the mid aughts). “I wouldn’t mind seeing what before the pandemic began? BOOKS: What kind of nonfiction books people are up to,” she told her friend, “as long as they ‘What blew my mind my BALL: The last couple of books I was are you drawn to? can’t see me.” An online avatar is born: Duchess Goldb- freshman year was discovering reading when this hit were books by BALL: I love nonfiction novels. “Behind latt, illustrated by a 17th-century painting titled “Por- friends. My colleague Charlotte Alter’s the Beautiful Forevers” by Katherine GOLDBLATT, Page N9 “Paradise Lost.” ’ “The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For,” BIBLIOPHILES, Page N9 JULY 5, 2020 Boston Sunday Globe Books N9 The incendiary politics of the ’90s uZELIZER ing so it was clear — even to those of Continued from Page N8 us in the press gallery, chronicling this openness on Capitol Hill, and greater vital episode in American history — opportunities for backbenchers to flex that, as Zelizer puts it, “the conserva- their muscles could be directed at the tive movement was reshaping the po- very Democrats who enacted those re- litical landscape, turning politicians forms and could be weaponized in cre- into villains in the public imagination ative and cruel ways. through their campaign to delegiti- The same elements of Republican mize the federal government.” rule that the Democrats deplored — In short, this was far more than promiscuous ties with lobbyists, de- just Newt being Newt. pendence on corporate contributions, This is a remarkable, riveting story, fealty to special interests — were the one with broad consequences, even if very elements of post-Watergate Dem- it is true (and it is) that though “Ging- ocratic rule. Gingrich understood rich liked to present himself as a big- that, exploited that, and rode that to idea man,” as Zelizer argues, “the power. truth is that his contributions as a par- Zelizer describes Gingrich as “ex- tisan tactician were far more impor- traordinarily arrogant, totally self-ab- tant than anything he did in terms of sorbed, and brutally ruthless.” In Con- policy.” gress he was an agitator, not a legisla- One quibble, and it is structural tor. He understood that in an era of rather than factual: Zelizer focuses impatience with government it was ef- with near-microscopic detail on the fective to portray the House Demo- fall of Speaker Wright and Gingrich’s crats as part of the permanent politi- role in thrusting him from office. Fair cal establishment. He considered bi- enough. It probably was, as Zelizer partisanship a trap. He took on not puts it in the last sentence of this read- only the Democrats but also the capi- able volume, the beginning of the end tal’s many totems and its multiple ta- of American political civility, for “its boos. His mantra: “Conflict equals ex- shadow looms large and grows longer SENGCHOY INTHACHACK/STOCK.ADOBE.COM posure equals power.” with each passing day.” Gingrich mastered conflict, he But the Wright episode is only part sought public exposure, and he won of the story. There is far more. It is on- power. It was an astonishing achieve- ly on the eighth-to-the-last page of this LESSONS IN POWER ment. It is impossible today, at the dis- book that Zelizer introduces the Con- tance of a quarter-century, to compre- tract with America, the founding doc- hend the permanence and the perva- ument of the new GOP Congress of Lacy Crawford’s memoir ‘Notes on a Silencing’ siveness of the Democratic rule on the 1995. The reader learns almost noth- Hill that Gingrich assailed. It was ing specific, or even general, about examines a long-buried crime at St. Paul’s School complete and unyielding. It ended up what the Gingrich revolution wrought being a juicy target for an opportunist in the years in which he was speaker. By Kerri Arsenault NOTES ON A SILENCING: A Memoir predatory way, she’s unsure what to with a mission. Nor anything about Gingrich’s fall GLOBE CORRESPONDENT By Lacy Crawford do. She begins to sense danger in ev- So Gingrich took on Speaker from grace, and from power. Zelizer acy Crawford’s story is as Little, Brown, 392 pages, $28 ery man. Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., of Cambridge, skims lightly over the relationship common as a housefly. When Crawford returns to school and then set his sights on a series of Gingrich had, or has, with Donald J. As a 15-year-old girl, she she is whiplashed by whispered other Democratic mastodons, eventu- Trump. L was sexually assaulted. scorn and ostracized by friends “gid- ally targeting O’Neill’s florid, oleagi- Perhaps that is fodder for another Two older male students which she finds herself.