Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works
by Newt Gingrich
Regnery, 310 pp., $27.95

The change train is picking up steam in American politics. In his new book, Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works, Newt Gingrich finds hope for change in a return to traditional Republican themes of opposing government bureaucracy and encouraging entrepreneurship. Gingrich is a master sloganeer, and he establishes his visionary credentials through coining such gems as “hope lies, as it always has, in the American People” and recommending that Republicans “[seize] the moment of change and making it permanent by implementing real change.” He establishes his non-partisan credentials by attacking the Republican Party for “shrillness” and for using fear-based appeals which, after years of repetition, convince the public that the party message is “phony and misleading.”

The argument seems accurate enough. Yet Gingrich’s own tenure as Speaker of the House was built around the same divisive scapegoating and melodramatic posturing he criticizes in modern Republicans, so it is hard now to take him at his word. Gingrich’s most visible accomplishments, the petulant shut-down of the government in 1995, and the initiation of the Clinton impeachment process, were all about shrill campaigning and distracting citizens from government. And one need not look to the past for contradictions: Flipping to a random page will suffice.

Government vs. Entrepreneurship
Real Change reads like a self-help book for dispirited Republican Party faithful, offering salvation for merely following Uncle Newt’s 10-step plan for success. The book’s central premise, that government “fails” and entrepreneurship “works,” is a lens through which to view every subject. For Gingrich, a cabal of union bosses, Hollywood liberals, greedy trial lawyers, and Democratic Party leaders—the “fringe left…fascinated by the process of accumulating power in a free society and then using it for their own ideological purposes”—plot from smoke-filled rooms to wrest power from hapless Republican businessmen, who “operate rationally” and believe in freedom and, therefore, cannot comprehend government bureaucracy. Rather than shedding insight on the challenges facing the country, Gingrich forces this binary frame onto each topic, trivializing every national political issue that he discusses.

In the clearest example of such triviality, Gingrich describes the war in Iraq as a failure of bureaucracy through a lack of “metrics.” Ignoring the causes of violence in Iraq, he makes no mention of sectarian power struggles or the potential for Iraqi civil war. Nor does he admit Iraqi dissatisfaction with American occupation, the deaths of Iraqi civilians, or deteriorating living conditions, except by vague implication. The inability to rebuild crucial Iraqi infrastructure is not the result of hapless performance by private firms like Halliburton, assigned to the job through dubious no-bid contracts, but instead is the fault of interagency bureaucratic “red-tape.” For Gingrich, such bureaucracy offers a beacon of “dangerous hope to the terrorists.”

A Simplistic Approach to Reality
Similar analysis pervades each chapter. Sometimes the analysis hits near the mark, for instance in describing the “New York Miracle” of William Bratton, former chief of the New York City Police Department. More often, it misses completely. The tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for Gingrich, exemplifies failures in FEMA’s bureaucracy, rather than the catastrophic failure of leadership on the part of President Bush, the cronyism and greed on the part of contractors and lobbyists, or the injustice of entrenched poverty. He blames economic collapse in Detroit on government spending and bureaucracy, dismissing the many other factors at play. Even illegal immigration is a product of bureaucratic red tape and has nothing to do with North America’s severe economic imbalances. And so on. Instead of confronting the complex structural problems in society and government, or recognizing that even good intentions and flawless execution often fall short, metrics or no metrics, he forces all debate into the same narrow boxes that have plagued Republican Party ideology for a generation.

Searching Anew for Change
Ultimately, Real Change is a book best judged by its cover. Newt Gingrich stares resolutely into the camera, smiling slightly, his arms folded across his chest. Behind him, two roads diverge, an insightful metaphor for the choices facing America. The photograph has little contrast, lending Gingrich the aspect of a cardboard cutout against a green-screened background. Large white letters scream “REAL CHANGE.” The tagline, “From the World That Fails to the World That Works” essentially sums up the following 250 pages. Actually reading them is like dredging a wading pool.]]>