Newt for President?

Political Players is a weekly conversation with the leaders, consultants, and activists who are shaping American politics. This week, CBS News' Brian Goldsmith talks with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich about dissatisfaction with the current Republican candidates, and whether he might jump into the race.

CBSNews.com: There is a new AP poll, showing that the most popular Republican candidate for president is named undecided. Do you think there's a reason there is such a hole in this field, and that Republicans don't feel happy about their choices?

Newt Gingrich: Well, look, I think that the average Republican understands that we need very large change in Washington. I think they keep looking for a candidate who can articulate with passion and directness the scale of the change, and what they would do differently.

And while the people who are running are solid folks, they don't think any of them have connected yet in that way, and it is ironic from my perspective. If you think about it, that the people who told me all spring, "You had to make a decision, you had to make a decision. You have to run, you have to run." Now we are faced with a situation where nobody is much above 30 percent.

McCain, who was the frontrunner, is gradually disappearing. Thompson, who didn't exist, is now almost the frontrunner. It strikes me, it is a pretty good vindication of a theory that this whole thing is way too long and consultants are making way too much money. I think that it's perfectly reasonable to wait around for a while, and see what happens.

CBSNews.com: But is there an argument to be made that you need that much time to build the organization, if not to vault to the top of the polls?

Newt Gingrich: Well, I would ask John McCain.

CBSNews.com: If you think you are the guy with the big ideas, if you think you could win, why wouldn't you run?

Newt Gingrich: Well, I think first of all, I'm using this time to develop American Solutions, a new generation of solutions at all levels, not just for Washington, but for school board, county commission, city council, state legislature. There are 513,000 elected offices in the US.

And I think my first job is to try to understand what we need to do to be successful as a country. How can we organize ourselves to do it? And to try to launch a mass movement of people across the whole country who are committed to that scale of change, and who want to apply it. Not just to the presidency, not just to the House, the Senate, but to every level of government. I think that is my first job. And until I have completed that educational job, I am very, very unwilling to spend my time and energy on politics, if I can avoid it.

CBSNews.com: And I see that beginning on September 27th, the 13th anniversary of the Contract with America, you are going to be reaching out to all these elected officials throughout the country, proposing solutions on energy and education and health care. What do you think the results of the conference are going to be?

Newt Gingrich: Well, first conference, first briefing is actually this Monday, from 12 to 6 Eastern time, at the US Chamber of Commerce. And it will be webcast at American Solutions. There will be six hours on moving government from the world that fails to the world that works, and outlining a first layer of solutions and tools.

And you get a little taste of it if you go to YouTube, and look at FedEx versus Federal Bureaucracy, which is a little piece of a speech I gave at the American Enterprise Institute, that begins to illustrate the scale of change I think we need.

Second, I think that my goal is going to be, on September 27th and 29th, when we webcast to the whole country, to try to reach out to Democrats, Republicans and independents, with practical, common sense, sound solutions that lead people to believe that they can get things done in an effective way.

CBSNews.com: Why haven't the other candidates embraced your ideas? You've said a number of times, it would be a lot easier for you if someone else would do this.

Newt Gingrich: Well, you ought to call them and ask them. I mean, let me give you an example. English as the language of government is an 85 percent issue. I don't know why candidates don't campaign on an 85 percent issue. The right to say "one nation under God" as part of the Pledge of Allegiance is a 91 percent issue. I do not know why candidates don't campaign on standing up to the Ninth Circuit court, which has just been so profoundly wrong and so anti-religious.

By 89 to seven, the country believes that science offers great opportunity to find solutions. And yet I do not sense any candidate in the race talking about the centrality of science, and the importance of rethinking all of our regulatory processes to maximize the rate of innovation. You ought to go ask the candidates. I think what happens is all of these candidates talk to their consultants.

None of their consultants know anything. The consultants all tell them to stick to whatever they read in the Washington Post, or the New York Times that morning. That is how you get kind of a circular conversation among people who do not know very much, telling people not to say very much.

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.

By Brian Goldsmith