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A review by mikegloudemans
Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party by Julian E. Zelizer
3.0
My Youtube review: https://youtu.be/kV-u5Nt2e_Y
The author's coverage of the late-1980s political showdown between Republican Minority Whip Newt Gingrich and Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright was tense, thorough, and surprisingly balanced. I'm no fan of Gingrich or his new-at-the-time tactics as described in this book, but there also does seem to have been a lot wrong with the Democrat-led House then too, and I couldn't help but slightly admire the political maneuvering that the GOP put into play to gain some clout, as nasty as the long-term consequences may have been.
The author's assertion that things could have gone a different way, towards a less polarized political climate, if not for Gingrich's influence... is plausible, but not fully substantiated in this book. Given the broadening media spotlight looking for sensational stories and an American public more in tune to political scandals and corruption, real or perceived, following Nixon's downfall (two factors that Zelizer explores in detail), it seems that U.S. politics was already fertile ground for increased partisan battles, and that if Gingrich and his camp hadn't begun the shift then someone else would have soon enough. The author also didn't give quite enough info to convince me that Gingrich pretty much single-handedly "burned down the house" as he asserts; he could be right, but I have a lot of follow-up questions on this. I learned quite a bit from the book, but much of that I'll take with a grain of salt, and what I enjoyed most about reading it was the inside look into one political drama playing out in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Unfortunately, towards the end of the book, the author pretty drastically shifts from simply describing Gingrich's actions and loosely speculating about his motives, to instead basically writing as if he's reading Gingrich's mind. Up until this point, Gingrich and Wright were both portrayed as somewhat shady characters who might stand for something or might actually just be grappling for more political power, but in the end the author suddenly throws his unequivocal support behind Wright, basically totally vindicating Wright and condemning Gingrich as the villain who will go down in infamy for ruining U.S. politics. Sure, it was pretty clear from the start who the author's favorites were, and sure, a lot of the quotations mentioned actually were straight out of Gingrich's mouth, but I wish the author had left it a bit more open for thought than this, since at least as he tells the story, it's not quite as clear-cut as he makes it out to be by the last chapter. Instead, the rhetoric at the end of the book, as some other reviewers have pointed out, starts to feel like it has a touch of the very sort of partisan warfare that the author is lamenting.
Those relatively minor gripes aside, the central story was well-written, well-researched, and altogether captivating, and I enjoyed reading it.
The author's coverage of the late-1980s political showdown between Republican Minority Whip Newt Gingrich and Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright was tense, thorough, and surprisingly balanced. I'm no fan of Gingrich or his new-at-the-time tactics as described in this book, but there also does seem to have been a lot wrong with the Democrat-led House then too, and I couldn't help but slightly admire the political maneuvering that the GOP put into play to gain some clout, as nasty as the long-term consequences may have been.
The author's assertion that things could have gone a different way, towards a less polarized political climate, if not for Gingrich's influence... is plausible, but not fully substantiated in this book. Given the broadening media spotlight looking for sensational stories and an American public more in tune to political scandals and corruption, real or perceived, following Nixon's downfall (two factors that Zelizer explores in detail), it seems that U.S. politics was already fertile ground for increased partisan battles, and that if Gingrich and his camp hadn't begun the shift then someone else would have soon enough. The author also didn't give quite enough info to convince me that Gingrich pretty much single-handedly "burned down the house" as he asserts; he could be right, but I have a lot of follow-up questions on this. I learned quite a bit from the book, but much of that I'll take with a grain of salt, and what I enjoyed most about reading it was the inside look into one political drama playing out in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Unfortunately, towards the end of the book, the author pretty drastically shifts from simply describing Gingrich's actions and loosely speculating about his motives, to instead basically writing as if he's reading Gingrich's mind. Up until this point, Gingrich and Wright were both portrayed as somewhat shady characters who might stand for something or might actually just be grappling for more political power, but in the end the author suddenly throws his unequivocal support behind Wright, basically totally vindicating Wright and condemning Gingrich as the villain who will go down in infamy for ruining U.S. politics. Sure, it was pretty clear from the start who the author's favorites were, and sure, a lot of the quotations mentioned actually were straight out of Gingrich's mouth, but I wish the author had left it a bit more open for thought than this, since at least as he tells the story, it's not quite as clear-cut as he makes it out to be by the last chapter. Instead, the rhetoric at the end of the book, as some other reviewers have pointed out, starts to feel like it has a touch of the very sort of partisan warfare that the author is lamenting.
Those relatively minor gripes aside, the central story was well-written, well-researched, and altogether captivating, and I enjoyed reading it.