About 100 Washingtonians gathered Tuesday night at the center-right American Enterprise Institute, where Gingrich is a resident scholar, to hear him deliver a speech, "Reflections of a Private Citizen." The crowd included about a dozen journalists, including Donald Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, a few lobbyists (representing Honeywell and Lehman Brothers among others) and several think-tankers, such as AEI colleague Norman Ornstein. Two camera crews filmed the event. And a smiley Callista Bisek, Gingrich's mistress-turned-girlfriend, listened attentively.

Continue Reading...

His crusade has put him at odds with his own party, as the Republican leadership in the Senate has killed his legislation with parliamentary manuevers. All of this has helped him develop the image of a maverick reformer. That reputation was dented this month -- just as the presidential preseason was ending -- by revelations he put pressure on the Federal Communications Commission to make a decision that concerned one of his campaign contributors. But Lettergate was important not for what it revealed about McCain but for how it illuminated the difficulty of being an inside-the-system reformer.

Continue Reading...

Why does this sex-mad millionaire believe the Reform Party is the appropriate playmate for his presidential romp?

For its part, why would this party even consider getting into bed with the him?

After all, in case no one's noticed, Trump violates the first principle of the Reform Party.

In 1997, at its founding convention in Kansas City, the party passed a platform that began with eight "constitutional principles." The very first of these reads, "We shall seek to reform our electoral, lobbying and campaign practices to ensure that our elected government officials and our candidates owe their allegiance and remain accountable to the people whom they are elected to serve rather than other influence-seeking agencies." Now if there ever was an individual who qualified all by himself as an "influence seeking agency," it would have to be The Donald. He has bragged openly about his pay-to-play political activities: "I'm a very big contributor ... " he's said. "I'm maxed out every year."

Continue Reading...

At the Dec. 2 debate in New Hampshire, Fox News Channel moderator Brit Hume asked Bush what he reads, and Bush cited a biography of Dean Acheson, who was secretary of state for President Harry Truman. His aides later identified the book as "Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World," by James Chace, a highly regarded expert on international affairs.

That's certainly egghead reading material. But at the next debate, when CNN's Judy Woodruff asked Bush what lessons he had drawn from Acheson's career in foreign affairs, he barely answered the question, offering only familiar bromides from his stump speech, such as "we must promote the peace" and "free trade brings ... hope and prosperity."

Continue Reading...

We were talking Tuesday morning in a courtroom in the Superior Court of Washington, minutes before the latest hearing in the case, and I remarked that it was hard to
make sense of Newt's scorched-earth approach to the divorce, which has already
revealed his six-year-long extramarital affair with congressional aide Calista Bisek and tainted whatever was left of his image as a family-values Republican.

If he's pocketing $50,000 per speech, as reported, why wouldn't he just strike a deal and avoid all the negative publicity? His strategy of all-out fighting -- and dragging his new love into the mess -- seems irrational to an outsider, I commented.

"It looks that way to an insider," Marianne said with a sad smile.

Continue Reading...

When Andy Hiller, the political correspondent for
WHDH-TV in Boston, had George W. Bush in front of a camera on Wednesday, he asked the
Texas governor if he could name the president of Chechnya. Bush could not.
Nor could he name the general who recently took power in Pakistan or the new
prime minister of India. Bush only answered one of the four questions correctly
when he identified the president of Taiwan as "Lee."

What made the Q&A worse for Bush was that he responded to the questions with petulance. Rather than
explaining that he is a big-picture guy and calmly providing a strategic vision of U.S.
foreign policy concerning these areas, he shot back at the reporter.

"Can you name the foreign minister of Mexico?" Bush asked, apparently proud that he knew the
answer. Hiller reasonably replied that he was not the one running
for president.

Continue Reading...

But let me be clear: by "I," I mean not David Corn, but "David Corn," a fictional version of myself who, via the "literary projection" method adopted by Morris (as opposed to "Morris"), had access to Morris (again, not "Morris") when he was writing "Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan."

As first reported in the New York Times, Morris, who previously penned an acclaimed biography of Theodore Roosevelt, writes in his long-awaited Reagan biography of a fellow who shares the name of the book's author but not his history.

The "Morris" of the book happens to have been born in 1912 in Illinois, where Reagan grew up. Consequently, "Morris" is a contemporary of Reagan, able to describe Reagan's exploits in high school and college, as well as reminisce about Reagan when Reagan was working in an Air Force film unit during World War II. (Fortunately for Morris, "Morris" bumped into Reagan then).

Continue Reading...

In divorce proceedings Gingrich initiated against his second wife, Marianne, the onetime champion of "family values" could be forced to sit through a legal deposition in which he is asked a series of probing questions about his personal life, queries that will likely cover allegations that he has engaged in a long-term extramarital affair with Callista Bisek, a 33-year-old House staffer.

Already, Marianne's legal team has won permission from a superior court judge in Georgia to take a videotaped deposition from Bisek on Sept. 29. If that deposition proceeds, Marianne's attorneys certainly will grill Bisek on whether Gingrich was an adulterer when he was successfully leading the so-called Republican Revolution, and when he was pushing for Clinton's impeachment.

Assuming that Gingrich eventually will have to appear for his own deposition, Salon has composed a partial list of questions that the former House speaker is likely to face.

Continue Reading...

After learning that the Star magazine would publish an article on the alleged extramarital affair between the former House speaker and a congressional aide named Calista Bisek, the New York Post and the New York Daily News both rushed out breathless stories on the supposed tryst -- which Gingrich and Bisek would neither confirm nor deny.

"Newt's Fooling Around with His Girl on the Hill," shouted the Post headline.

The Daily News Web site polled readers: "Do you think Newt Gingrich is a hypocrite?"

Short answer: Of course. This is a guy who gained the speakership of the House of Representatives by posing as a champion of family values. Remember how Gingrich repeatedly referred to liberals and Democrats as deviants and miscreants? And, later, how he gleefully tried to exploit Monicagate?

Well, Gingrich, the advocate of families, informed his first wife he was divorcing her when she was ill with cancer. Now, he is divorcing his second wife, Marianne, and a tabloid will soon publish a picture of him holding hands with his much-younger girlfriend.

Continue Reading...

As the NRCC was preparing to unleash a yet-undisclosed $10 million GOP ad blitz exploiting the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Linder met on Tuesday with a dozen reporters for an on-the-record lunch arranged by Bill Press, co-host of CNN's "Crossfire," and Marc Sandalow, Washington bureau chief of the San Francisco Chronicle. With a week to go to the congressional elections, Linder, the man in charge of the House Republicans' campaign, told reporters Monicagate would have little to do with the election, and for Republicans to focus on it "could be overkill."

"Nothing is driving the elections," Linder told the journalists. Not HMOs, he insisted, not Social Security, not taxes. And not the Monica mess. What Linder didn't tell reporters was that three hard-hitting GOP Monicagate ads were already produced and ready for a last-weekend attack.

Continue Reading...

The reason he can't write that story is that it's now children's hour in the House of Representatives. The Republican Clinton-haters are going for instant gratification. They taste blood, and they don't care what kind of mess they make in the process. They don't care that the polls indicate the public doesn't want Clinton to be bounced for his semi-sex and full lies. They're not bothered by the fact that for only the third time in the republic's history an impeachment inquiry is being launched, but that this time its unprecedented focus is presidential prevarication about a consensual relationship.

Continue Reading...

Cohen adopted a steely expression as he replied, "The only motivation driving this action today was our absolute obligation to protect the American people."

But cynicism could not be avoided. I was eating lunch with a prominent Republican official when his office called to inform him of the Clinton-ordered attacks on terrorist installations in Afghanistan and a supposed chemical-weapons factory in Sudan. The official immediately asked the caller, "Is CNN airing video footage of a young girl running with a kitten?" -- a direct reference to a scene in the film. He got up to leave, noting, "Clinton will do anything to get away from Hillary."

Continue Reading...

Starr has cut his immunity deal with Lewinsky. Having subpoenaed President Clinton, he is negotiating with the White House over the forum in which he can grill the president. And he has won a court ruling in his attempt to force Clinton chum (and White House lawyer) Bruce Lindsey to testify.

In Washington, the impression from all this is that the painfully thorough Starr has finally hit cruising speed and that the whole saga is racing toward its dramatic conclusion.

Of course, the end of Starr vs. Clinton has been predicted before, only to see new plot twists suddenly emerge in this extended political soap opera. But if the independent counsel actually is close to wrapping up his case this time, the question is: What is Starr's exit strategy?

Ever since Starr made Lewinsky the most famous intern in the world, the basic issues have remained the same. What would Lewinsky say under oath? If she says she lied in her deposition in the Paula Jones case and that she really did have sex with the president, what would that mean, legally?

Continue Reading...