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 off such incidents as just tiny mistakes.

There seems to be some pattern of anger underneath for people who don't give him the right kind of approval or prestige. When somebody in power acts that way, it's a very unsettling thing to see; there are always encounters with people who have more power or less power than you, and you have to know your ground and be proud of who you are.

Obviously, partisans are glad Gingrich has frittered away his momentum, because it helps the Democratic Party. So the part of me that's a Democrat is delighted. But the part of me that is a political observer, that saw an interesting figure who might have really put his stamp on the country and had at least made an attempt to come out with some answers for the country, is disappointed. He somehow destroyed that opportunity little by little by whatever it is in him that's not as confident as it seems to be on the surface.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS

Author of The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev 1960-1963

THERE'S A DISTINCTION THAT USED TO BE drawn between congressional Republicans and presidential Republicans. They were of different temperaments and styles. Gingrich is obviously someone who would like to run for President, but 1995 shows that he really is more of the congressional-Republican mold. It fits him a lot more. Usually the skills of someone who is powerful in Congress and someone who is an effective President are different.

Kennedy was a very undistinguished Senator. He was not much of a parliamentarian. His colleagues did not think very well of him. On the other hand, for all his failings as President, he was a very effective national spokesman. Johnson was a wonderfully effective majority leader, and as President, one of the things he did best was to get votes in Congress for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A President without all those parliamentary skills would not have done that well. On the other hand, even Johnson would say that one of his weaknesses was as a national spokesman for a certain set of ideas. Gingrich has tried to be both, and the experience of 1995 suggests that is very difficult to do.

Gingrich is also a revolutionary leader, a man comfortable with the kind of turmoil required to bring about change. But revolutionary leaders in America, even when they are successful, usually flare for only a year or two, and then they tend to fade. Gingrich may be able to resist that, but history suggests that would be very tough.

ROBERT A. CARO

Author of The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power