THE ARGUMENT THAT NEWT GINGRICH deserved his reprimand and $ 300,000 fine because he used tax-exempt money to fund a college course at Reinhardt College is based on the idea that the course was actually “political” — that Gingrich taught the course to further specifically partisan aims. I am one of the only people in the world who have actually sat through every minute of ” Renewing American Civilization,” and I can tell you, or the ethics committee, or David Bonior, or Al Hunt, or anybody who wishes actually to know the truth instead of posturing, that the premise is absurd.
In March 1995, I signed on to co-author Gingrich’s book To Renew America. We had about three months to write the book. In trying to find my way into Newt’s mind, I sat through videotapes and read transcripts of the entire 10- week course. As an exercise in preparing to write a political manifesto, it was essentially useless. “Renewing American Civilization” was barely about politics itself, let alone partisan politics. It was about history. Gingrich’s views about America were summed up in the first lecture: “American civilization, when you compare it to other civilizations, has certain very positive characteristics. It has empowered more people from more backgrounds to pursue happiness. If I were to summarize it into one phrase, it would be that America is a great country with good people.”
The course did not always stay on such a lofty plane. One homework assignment (patterned after Peter Drucker) asked students to write down everything they did for a week to see how much time they wasted. Another involved listing ten things students would tell an immigrant to learn on arriving in this country. (“Drive a car” and “open a bank account” were some of the more interesting responses from the students, most of them older people who had returned to college.) A large portion of time was spent discussing the futurism of Alvin (Future Shock) Toffler and his wife. The course reading list included selections from Tocqueville, The Federalist Papers, and Building a Community of Citizens by Don Eberly.
But as for partisan politics, there is none. None. The speaker played and praised a lengthy recording of Franklin Roosevelt’s speech announcing the D- Day invasion. He spoke favorably of John E Kennedy and cited “a very heroic effort launched by [former] President Carter,” the Atlanta Project, as a model for civic virtue. Most important, there is not a single word in the ten lectures disparaging the Democratic party or praising the Republicans. Indeed, I challenge anyone to find a single word in the 20-hour course that constitutes “partisan politics.”
If I had to pick an example of a member of Congress using a tax-exempt forum for promoting a political point of view, I would point to Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1985 Godkin lectures at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Moynihan used that forum to introduce the idea that children were the nation’s “new poor,” the way the elderly had been in the 1930s. His proposed solution was to make children special beneficiaries of the state in the same way that the elderly were given government pensions under Social Security.
Moynihan’s presentation obviously had enormous impact. It was published almost word for word as an influential book, Family and Nation. The lectures also served as the foundation for Moynihan’s largely unproductive attempt at welfare reform — the Family Support Act of 1988 — and formed the bulwark of his opposition to last year’s far more successful effort, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996.
Yet would anyone seriously call Moynihan’s Godkin lectures “partisan politics” and start subjecting the Kennedy School and the Godkin Fund to investigation, reprimand, or censure from the Senate or the IRS? That would be a complete misrepresentation. Moynihan is an intellectual, a former college professor, and obviously loves dialogue and the play of ideas. So does Newt. If Newt Gingrich is to be smeared for teaching a course at modest Reinhardt College, then let’s start investigating Moynihan and Harvard as well.
William Tucker is a writer living in Brooklyn.
