Newt for President?

CBS News' Brian Goldsmith Interviews Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich

(CBS) 

CBSNews.com: But isn't politics, isn't becoming a candidate, being out there, the best way to get your policy ideas adopted?

Newt Gingrich: How? Absolutely not.

CBSNews.com: Didn't you get the most done when you were Speaker of the House?

Newt Gingrich: Wait a second. I got a great deal done after 16 years of work, heading up GOPac, using it as a training program which sent out 53,000 training tapes a month to candidates, and incumbents, and having helped shape and grow a majority over a 16 year period. Then I had a very effective three year burst as Speaker, with welfare reform and tax cuts and balancing the budget.

A lot of important things, including creating the Thomas system. But it took that whole effort. It wasn't the four years. It was also the 16 years that preceded it.

And so I would argue that what I am trying to do right now is just reach out across the country, developing a new generation of solutions, and to enable people to have access to the solutions so that they can use them for their own local government, for their own situation, and be in a position to truly help the whole country, and help Democrats, help Republicans, and help independents. And I will guarantee you, from my personal experience, if I was trying to do something this educational inside the political process, it would become impossible.

You know, Lincoln and Douglas debated seven times for three hours each. Lincoln went to Cooper Union and gave a two hour, 7,300 word speech. Nowadays, we have auditions. We do not have debates. Ten or eleven people looking like they're trying out for American Idol, standing around patiently while a TV personality asks them an inane question and then gives them 30 seconds to give an inane answer.

That is not communication. Yeah, I would much rather do what I am doing, and try to have people actually look at real material. I reach fewer people, but with greater intensity and with greater clarity. And I am comfortable that over time, this model that reaches much further works better because I have no time pressure.

I'm not trying to win the next election. I am not trying to answer questions about who my consultant is, or how much I am paying my pollster, or how the fundraiser went last night. I am just out developing ideas and solutions, and appealing to people that think that you could have a better America with more solutions if we worked together.

CBSNews.com: And a big part of your policy has been to attack the status quo in Washington you see. You call it the world that fails. But isn’t your party—a Republican president—essentially running Washington?

Newt Gingrich: No, it's not. My party inherited from Lyndon Johnson a huge gigantic bureaucracy that has zero interest in working for the Republicans. They tried to manage those bureaucracies ineptly. They failed to reform them. You know, the fact is, it is a mess.

CBSNews.com: But why isn't a man you supported, George W. Bush, doing these things to reform the bureaucracy?

Newt Gingrich: I wish he would. You would have to call and ask Tony Snow why he isn’t. And I do not know why he isn't.

CBSNews.com: I know this is a vast generalization, but if you were to ask the man on the street, what does he think about Newt Gingrich, what do you think the answer would be? Is there a stereotype of you that you need to overcome?

Newt Gingrich: Well, I do not need to overcome it, because I am not a candidate. Look, I think the most common reaction I get from people, if they actually hear me give an entire speech, is they are amazed at the difference between the media image and the person I am in person. And I will let you decide whether that is because I am two different people, or that is because the media image is wrong.

I focus on ideas. I focus on solutions. I work on very human problems, like Alzheimer's and cancer and diabetes. And I am not going to back off on those kind of things. I think they are very important. So, I think over time people who watch what I am doing conclude that we have lots of solutions, and we are working on lots of positive things. And that we are different. You know, that I'm different and what I'm doing is different than what sometimes has been portrayed in the past.

CBSNews.com: What are the biggest lessons you think you learned from your time as Speaker?

Newt Gingrich: That we need much more profound, much more fundamental change, and that it requires dramatically greater efforts in education than I would have ever imagined.

CBSNews.com: What do you say to some fellow Republicans who think that Hillary Clinton is using you, most recently on Alzheimer's research, to appear more bipartisan?

Newt Gingrich: Well, I am delighted that Senator Clinton thinks it is useful to be bipartisan.

CBSNews.com: And what is your opinion of her candidacy more generally?

Newt Gingrich: Well, I think she is a Democratic frontrunner. I think she is very formidable. I do not think anybody has made money betting against the Clintons in elected politics since 1980. And I think that she is, clearly, formidable, hard-working, and intelligent. I think she is also way too liberal and she and I could have a lot of fun debating because we would be on very different sides.

CBSNews.com: And how do you assess the rest of the Democratic field?

Newt Gingrich: As having a very hard time figuring out how they are going to get past Hillary Clinton.

CBSNews.com: Are you going to attend the big Republican presidential straw poll in Ames, Iowa this summer?

Newt Gingrich: Absolutely. I have been invited by the state party as sort of a senior Republican. I am not a candidate. American Solutions is going to have eight workshops at the straw poll. I will be there. I will give a little talk, much like Senator [Chuck] Grassley (R-IA). And I am looking forward to it very, very much.

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Newt Gingrich was speaker of the House from 1995-1999. He was the architect of the "Contract with America" that defined the Republican takeover of Congress for the first time in forty years. Gingrich has written nine books, including fiction and nonfiction bestsellers. Following his speakership--and resignation from his House seat in Georgia--Gingrich has focused on public speaking, writing, consulting, and developing policy ideas on health care, government reform, and national defense.