TOXIC
saw the House as a counterweight to President Ronald Reagan and his “cruelly deranged” policies, decided to step down, saying that he expected his resignation to serve as a “total payment for the anger and hostility we feel toward each other.”
Zelizer writes about all of this with aplomb, teasing out the ironies and the themes, showing that what made Gingrich exceptional wasn’t so much his talent as his timing. He happened to seize power at a moment when a post-Watergate ecosystem paradoxically selected for politicians like him — legislatively useless, for the most part, but freakishly talented at political warfare and self-promotion, wielding idealism as a cudgel while never deigning to be idealistic themselves. You don’t have to be nostalgic for the old political era of smoke-filled backrooms to wonder if the public was better served by an arsonist bearing a blowtorch and a Cheshire cat grin.