The Inner Quest of Newt Gingrich

[PatSeg]

Someone posted this article by Gail Sheehy from 1995 on Facebook and I found it fascinating. It is very long, but worth the time.

<From the cauldron of his childhood -- the father who abandoned him, the manic depressive mother who loved him too much, the stepfather whose anger shaped the family -- Newt Gingrich emerged with a heroic need that became his mission. Talking to his inner circle of family, friends, and associates, and to the Speaker himself, GAIL SHEEHY learns the details of Newt's wars, his women, and his contract with himself.

"I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to." Newt Gingrich is coaching me on writing about himself. Ten years ago he was arguably the most disliked member of Congress. Today he is holding forth from the veranda of the office of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, looking down on the Capitol Mall as if it were the great lawn of his own vast estate.

Newt Gingrich is the sonic boom of a presidential election season --a loud noise generated by a media meteor moving at supersonic speed. In June he declared that all presidential candidates would have to adjust to a world in which his Congress is "relatively more important than the White House." True, he has shaken up the jowly House and led the Republicans out of the wilderness, but he remains an untested national commodity. Maybe that explains the big presidential tease, which will continue as long as he can hold the spotlight. "If there were a large enough vacuum, then obviously I'm willing to consider it," he said in July.>

Much, much more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newt/vanityfair1.html