NEWT GINGRICH: TAKING HIS MEASURE

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN

Author of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream

DESPITE BEING A DEMOCRAT AND NOT NECessarily imagining that I would have liked him at the start, I thought his state-of-the-Speaker address last January was remarkable. He talked about cities, racial problems, the need for opportunity. But since that time, he has shown little of that large-heartedness. He seems like such a contradiction, because he obviously has big ideas. Yet he has fallen prey many times to petty mishaps that seem to emanate from part of his personality. You cannot brush...