Democracy Uprising
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      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

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      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

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      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

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      How to make sure your disruptive protest helps…

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      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

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      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

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      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

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      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

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      Strategy is a Craft

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      Six Essays About War and About Peace

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      Hacer Que Nuestras Demandas Sean Tanto Orácticas Como…

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      泛美洲人 爱德华多·加莱亚诺的世界 (Chinese)

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      C’è più di un modo per colpire il…

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      La strategia di Gandhi per il successo –…

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      IL BANK TRANSFER DAY: UN SUCCESSO

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      Come il movimento Occupiamo Wall Street si sta…

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      ガンジーはどのように勝利したのか? (Japanese)

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      Revenge of the Combat Cartoonist (Japanese)

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      As reformas não reformistas de André Gorz mostram…

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      Imigração tem efeito positivo sobre emprego e salários

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      Arabic

      Abandoning the World Bank (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      The Return of Daniel Ortega (in Arabic)

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Democracy Uprising

  • About
    • About Mark Engler
    • About Democracy Uprising
  • Books
    • This Is An Uprising
    • How To Rule the World
  • Topics
    • All Labor Latin America Social Movements Religion U.S. Politics / Elections War / Militarism Book Reviews Environment Essays / First Person Global Economy Immigration
      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

      Social Movements

      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

      Blog

      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

      2023-2025

      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

      Social Movements

      How to make sure your disruptive protest helps…

      Social Movements

      Why protests work, even when not everybody likes…

      Latest Articles

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

      Social Movements

      Strategy is a Craft

      Labor

      This new model for upholding labor law may…

      Labor

      Democrats Won Power in Several States. Will They…

      Labor

      The Case for a Social Distancing Wage

      Labor

      The Seattle Protests Showed That Another World Is…

      Labor

      Reviving the General Strike

      Labor

      Jeff Bezos Has Enough! It’s Time for a…

      Labor

      There’s Still Power in a Strike

      Labor

      The Amazon Effect: Sweat, Surveillance, Exploitation

      Latin America

      How movements can maintain their radical vision while winning…

      Latin America

      The Pan American

      Latin America

      Lessons from the Pledge of Resistance

      Latin America

      The Children of Intervention

      Latin America

      Against Shithole Nationalism

      Latin America

      The Last Porto Alegre

      Latin America

      Kissinger Is Not Our Friend

      Latin America

      Even If You Have Nothing to Hide

      Social Movements

      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

      Social Movements

      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

      Social Movements

      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

      Social Movements

      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

      Social Movements

      How to make sure your disruptive protest helps…

      Social Movements

      Why protests work, even when not everybody likes…

      Social Movements

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

      Social Movements

      Strategy is a Craft

      Religion

      In God’s Country

      Religion

      Reverend Billy’s Holiday Shopocalypse

      Religion

      Toward the “Rights of the Poor”

      Religion

      The Pope and the Poor

      Religion

      Will the Next Pope Embrace Liberation Theology?

      Religion

      Remembering Romero

      Religion

      John Paul II’s Economic Ethics

      Religion

      Against the God of Free Trade

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Strategy is a Craft

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Think #MeToo didn’t make a real difference? Think…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      This new model for upholding labor law may…

      War / Militarism

      Does It Make Sense to Protest a President…

      War / Militarism

      Lessons from the Pledge of Resistance

      War / Militarism

      Is Rambo Still A Republican?

      War / Militarism

      War: The Wrong Jobs Program

      War / Militarism

      The Ascent of Niall Ferguson

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      Those Who Don’t Count

      War / Militarism

      Six Essays About War and About Peace

      War / Militarism

      The Dangerous Dignity of War

      Book Reviews

      The Pan American

      Book Reviews

      The Godfather of Microcredit

      Book Reviews

      Capitalism as Catastrophe

      Book Reviews

      Four Ways of Looking at an Aztec Eagle

      Book Reviews

      The Ascent of Niall Ferguson

      Book Reviews

      Ordinary Outrages

      Book Reviews

      No Better Place

      Book Reviews

      In God’s Country

      Environment

      Why Wendell Matters

      Environment

      The Gulf at the Gas Station

      Environment

      Climate Disobedience

      Environment

      Farming the Everglades

      Environment

      The Winter of the Climate Denier

      Environment

      Climate of Change: An “Inside-Outside” Strategy Against Global…

      Environment

      Provoking an American Climate Crisis

      Environment

      The Real “Farmer” Story: So God Made High-Fructose…

      Essays / First Person

      Is Rambo Still A Republican?

      Essays / First Person

      On the Price is Right

      Essays / First Person

      The Last Porto Alegre

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      Six Essays About War and About Peace

      Essays / First Person

      Republicans Among Us

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      New York Says “No”

      Essays / First Person

      The Sideshow Rebels

      Essays / First Person

      A Week in New York

      Global Economy

      Meet the Bailout’s New Slush Fund for Corporate…

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      The Seattle Protests Showed That Another World Is…

      Global Economy

      Jeff Bezos Has Enough! It’s Time for a…

      Global Economy

      The Amazon Effect: Sweat, Surveillance, Exploitation

      Global Economy

      The Godfather of Microcredit

      Global Economy

      Capitalism as Catastrophe

      Global Economy

      Immigration Economics: An Interview with Professor Giovanni Peri

      Global Economy

      The World Is Not Flat

      Immigration

      When Undocumented Activists Infiltrated ICE

      Immigration

      The Children of Intervention

      Immigration

      Immigration Economics: An Interview with Professor Giovanni Peri

      Immigration

      Science Fiction From Below

      Immigration

      Four Ways of Looking at an Aztec Eagle

      Immigration

      Treated Like a Criminal

      Immigration

      When Sanctuary is Resistance

      Immigration

      The Massive Immigrants Rights Protests of 2006 Are…

  • Translations
    • All Italiano Japanese Português Arabic Thai Chinese Deutsch Español Français
      Translations

      Jordlösa kombinerar radikala visioner med praktiska reformer (Swedish)

      Español

      Hacer Que Nuestras Demandas Sean Tanto Orácticas Como…

      Italiano

      C’è più di un modo per colpire il…

      Português

      As reformas não reformistas de André Gorz mostram…

      Español

      Las reformas no reformistas de André Gorz

      Deutsch

      Die nicht-reformistischen Reformen von André Gorz

      Italiano

      Richieste dei movimenti: sia pratiche che visionarie

      Chinese

      泛美洲人 爱德华多·加莱亚诺的世界 (Chinese)

      Italiano

      C’è più di un modo per colpire il…

      Italiano

      Richieste dei movimenti: sia pratiche che visionarie

      Italiano

      La strategia di Gandhi per il successo –…

      Italiano

      Le promesse infrante di Obama

      Italiano

      Guantanamo deve sparire

      Italiano

      IL BANK TRANSFER DAY: UN SUCCESSO

      Italiano

      Come il movimento Occupiamo Wall Street si sta…

      Italiano

      Economia tabù

      Japanese

      ガンジーはどのように勝利したのか? (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Truth Versus Superpower (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Bush’s Bad Business Empire (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Revenge of the Combat Cartoonist (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Bush’s Uneasy Mexican Visita (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Mark Twain in Iraq (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Globalization’s “Lost Decade” (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Hawks Say the Damnedest Things (Japanese)

      Português

      As reformas não reformistas de André Gorz mostram…

      Português

      A vida na Nação Prisão

      Português

      Outro pretexto?

      Português

      Imigração tem efeito positivo sobre emprego e salários

      Português

      O império hipotecado

      Arabic

      Abandoning the World Bank (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      The Return of Daniel Ortega (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Where’s The Jubilee? (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      The Last Porto Alegre (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Seattle At Five (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty? (in…

      Arabic

      Mexico’s Democratic Transition Still Incomplete (in Arabic)

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      Progressive Good Tidings of 2007 (in Thai)

      Thai

      2006: A Global Justice Year in Review (In…

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      WTO: Best Left For Dead? (In Thai)

      Thai

      Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty? (In…

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      Globalizers, Neocons, or… ? (in Thai)

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      泛美洲人 爱德华多·加莱亚诺的世界 (Chinese)

      Chinese

      Why Wendell Matters (in Chinese)

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      Globalization’s Watchdogs (in Chinese)

      Deutsch

      Die nicht-reformistischen Reformen von André Gorz

      Deutsch

      Als Martin Luther King seine Feuerwaffen aufgab

      Deutsch

      Mikrokredite: Die Entlassung eines Nobelpreisträgers

      Deutsch

      CAFTA – am besten stillschweigend beerdigen

      Deutsch

      Bush in Mexiko

      Deutsch

      Das globale Duell in Evian

      Deutsch

      Die Rückkehr des Daniel Ortega

      Español

      Hacer Que Nuestras Demandas Sean Tanto Orácticas Como…

      Español

      Las reformas no reformistas de André Gorz

      Español

      ¿Adoptará el nuevo papa la teología de la…

      Español

      Wall Street quiere que les estemos agradecidos

      Español

      Si Las Monjas Se Fueran a una Huelga,…

      Español

      ALEC retrocede; a la derecha le da un…

      Español

      ¿ALEC disgustado ante la pérdida de patrocinadores? Se…

      Español

      La vida en la nación prisión

      Français

      La révolution non-violente a-t-elle échoué en Egypte?

      Français

      Le pari risqué du populisme au Pérou

      Français

      Hong Kong Phooey

      Français

      Bush Nuit Même Aux Compagnies U.S.

      Français

      Le dynamisme du mouvement pour la paix

      Français

      La déroute de l’ALCA dans une Miami en…

      Français

      Ceux qui ne comptent pas

      Français

      La guerre en Irak : une expo des…

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Blog2011-2012

Joan Didion on Newt Gingrich

by Mark Engler May 16, 2011
written by Mark Engler May 16, 2011
Joan Didion on Newt Gingrich

A dispatch for the “Arguing the World” blog at Dissent magazine.

Published in Dissent.


It is a testament to the sad state of Republican White House hopefuls that Newt Gingrich can enter the field looking relatively sane and relatively presidential.

The former Speaker of the House, who formally announced his candidacy this past Wednesday, was the Paul Ryan of his day (a day not so long ago), claiming momentum and leading a conservative revolt against a Democratic president. Of course, many of us thought his political future had ended after he resigned both his leadership role and his seat in Congress following a poor showing by Republicans in the 1998 midterms—and after it was later revealed that, at the same time he helped spearhead the effort to impeach Bill Clinton for the Lewinsky affair, he was having an adulterous adventure of his own with a congressional staffer twenty-three years his junior.

At the National Review, Deroy Murdock writes from a conservative perspective about the massive political irresponsibility inherent in this behavior:

“Had this dalliance surfaced before the November 1998 midterm elections, the staggering hypocrisy would have triggered America’s gag reflex. Voters would have catapulted the Republicans from the Capitol dome and given the Democrats the House and the Senate. Gingrich’ s lack of self-control jeopardized the entire conservative agenda. Luckily for the Right and its ideas, Gingrich did not get caught with his pants down.”

I admit that, as a former John Edwards supporter, I can feel Murdock’s pain.

Like a hapless job applicant trying to turn a question about his greatest weakness into a plus, Gingrich has tied his infidelity to his admittedly over-ardent love of America. He told the Christian Broadcasting Network, “There’s no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”

While his personal failings are widely acknowledged, even on the right, to be a problem for his campaign, Gingrich’s plus side is supposed to be his intellectual gravitas. As Ari Melber noted at the Nation, he is often referred to as an “idea factory” by fellow conservatives.

My friend Adam John Waterman recently reminded me that the definitive debunking of the notion of Gingrich as a cogent thinker was provided by Joan Didion in an essay first published in the New York Review of Books and later collected in her Political Fictions. The essay is fun if you like seeing Didion use her strategy of dry, piercing dissection to mercilessly mock both Gingrich’s writing style and the content of his ideas. In a few typical paragraphs (dense but damning), she writes:

‘To complain that Mr. Gingrich’s thinking is “schematic,” as some have, seems not exactly to describe the problem, which is that the “scheme,” as revealed in his writing and lectures, remains so largely occult. The videotaped “Renewing American Civilization” lecture in which he discusses “The Historic Lessons of American Civilization” (Pillar One of the Five Pillars of American Civilization) offers, for example, clips from several television movies and documentaries about the Civil War, but not much clue about why the lessons of American civilization might be “historic,” and no clue at all why the remaining four Pillars of American Civilization (“Personal Strength,” “Entrepreneurial Free Enterprise,” “The Spirit of Invention and Discovery,” and “Quality as Defined by Deming“) might not be more clearly seen as subsections of Pillar One, or lessons of civilization. Similarly, the attempt to track from one to five in Mr. Gingrich’s “Five Reasons for Studying American History” (“One: History is a collective memory,” “Two: American history is the history of our civilization,” “Three: There is an American exceptionalism that can be best understood through history,” “Four: History is a resource to be learned from and used,” and “Five: There are techniques that can help you learn problem-solving from historic experience“) leaves the tracker fretful, uneasy, uncertain just whose synapses are misfiring.

….

“Outlining” or “listing” remains a favored analytical technique among the management and motivational professionals whose approach Mr. Gingrich has so messianically adopted….Yet, on examination, few of his own “areas” and “imperatives” and “initiatives,” his “steps” and “options” and “goals,” actually advance the discourse. The seventh of the seven steps necessary to solve the drug problem, as outlined in The Renew America, calls for the government to “intensify our intelligence efforts against drug lords across the planet and help foreign governments to trap them,” in other words exactly what the both the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Southern Command have been doing for some years now. No piety can long escape inclusion in one or another of Mr. Gingrich’s five or four or eleven steps; another of the seven steps necessary to solve the drug problem is the reinvigoration of Mrs. Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign.

The first of the “eight areas of necessary change” in our health care system calls for “focusing on preventive medicine and good health,” which meant, in Window of Opportunity, offering Medicare recipients $500 for not going to the doctor.’

Didion also discusses Gingrich’s historical fiction, which has been nicely covered in a photo gallery at Talking Points Memo.

Defenders of Gingrich would no doubt respond that Didion (and Talking Points Memo, too) is merely representative of the embittered bi-coastal liberal elite, unable to accept the ideas of such an iconoclastic thinker. These partisans may be right about Didion’s elitism, but, after the reading the essay, it’s hard to see how Gingrich could recover his image as a bearer of a serious intellectual agenda.

I wrote a review of Political Fictions back in 2002, shortly after it came out. There I argued that Didion’s stance of distanced, if withering, critique limited her role as a political advocate. However, given her otherwise fine contributions, I think she can be forgiven for her reluctance to enter into the grime of political battle.

‘These essays were originally framed, at least in a general sense, as book reviews. The result is that the work moves away from politics. Instead it becomes a reflection on meta-politics—the rhetoric and self-image of the process, as presented in the memoirs and monographs and scoops published by political insiders. Writing in this mode Didion can brilliantly note that “the number of medals awarded” for the invasion of Grenada “eventually exceeded the number of actual combatants.” But even she does not discuss Grenada as a military reality. Rather it is something more abstract, a “symbolic centerpiece” used by conservatives to define Reagan’s foreign policy. There can be no muckraking here because the author, adopting the role of literary critic, keeps several layers of detachment between herself and the political muck.

….

Nevertheless, Didion’s anger at political developments that many people, in advanced states of cynicism, have come to take for granted is genuinely refreshing. While she can’t quite pass as a real populist, and while she never quite dares to take up actual advocacy, her incisive criticism provides a valuable guide to a twelve-year period in which smaller and smaller pools of voters mattered in the political process, and “half the nation’s citizens had only a vassal relationship to the government under which they lived.” Whether or not this constitutes a new trend, it is one worth combating. We don’t have to consider ourselves innocent to be outraged.’

Joan DidionNewt GingrichPolitical Fictions
Mark Engler

Mark Engler is a writer based in Philadelphia and an editorial board member at Dissent magazine. His latest book, written with Paul Engler, is entitled This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century.

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The Author

Mark Engler is a writer based in Philadelphia and an editorial board member at Dissent magazine. His latest book, written with Paul Engler, is entitled This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century (Nation Books). Mark’s full bio is available here.

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