“He never reached the top in academia, and he never served in the military, yet his self-image was that of the heroic soldier-scholar who could inculcate his troops and lead them into battle. That was House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1995; or so it appeared.”
Tell Newt to Shut Up
- Everett M. Dirksen Prize for Journalism
- George Polk Award for National Reporting
Speaker Newt Gingrich and his troops promised a revolution when they seized power in January 1995. The year that followed was one of the most fascinating and tumultuous in modern American history. After stunning early success with the Contract with America, the Republicans began to lose momentum; by year’s end Gingrich was isolated and uncertain, and his closest allies were telling him to shut up.
Here is an unprecedented, fly-on-the-wall look at the successes, sellouts, and perhaps fatal mistakes of Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution. Based on the award-winning Washington Post series that documented the Republicans’ day-to-day attempts to revolutionize the American government, “Tell Newt to Shut Up!” gets to the heart of the political process.
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Tell Newt to Shut Up – Prize-Winning Washington Post Journalists Reveal How Reality Gagged the Gingrich Revolution
“Politicians put on the best show in town — and here they are with all their hypocrisy and idealism, self-service and public service, stupidity and sense, high drama and low skulduggery. It makes for wonderful reading.”
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Tell Newt to Shut Up – Prize-Winning Washington Post Journalists Reveal How Reality Gagged the Gingrich Revolution
“This is a wonderful look inside the revolution. It is a vivid portrait of the ups and downs, ins and outs, of Newt Gingrich and the gang.”
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Tell Newt to Shut Up – Prize-Winning Washington Post Journalists Reveal How Reality Gagged the Gingrich Revolution
“As one who worked at OSHA during the anti-regulatory frenzy of the Contract With America, I spoke to @davidmaraniss and Michael Weisskopf frequently for their book “Tell Newt to Shut Up!, I can confirm that David is as trustworthy a journalist as you can find. His word is solid.”
General Gingrich
Sonny Bono got it first. Before most professional image advisers and veteran Republican pols had a clue, the freshman congressman from Palm Springs anticipated what would happen. Newt Gingrich was rocketing into a new realm, and he seemed to have no idea how different and dangerous it would be. It mattered little that he had prepared himself to be Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives since his college days, or that he had spent thousands of hours with managers at Delta, Coca-Cola, Ford, and the Army studying how large institutions operated. Everything he had learned about leadership from examining the careers of FDR, Churchill, and Reagan was secondary now to one unavoidable fact that a mustachioed little guy who crooned “I Got You Babe” with Cher intuitively understood when others did not.
Bono issued his warning on the morning the world changed: January 4, 1995. Sonny’s first day as congressman. Newt’s first day as speaker. The revolution was already in full, dizzying swirl. Newt was marching from meeting to interview to speech with the bearing of an overstuffed field general, surrounded by the hubbub scrum of aides, photographers, and press hacks. As he and Bob Dole, majority leader of the Senate, were leaving a CBS Morning News interview in the old Agriculture Committee Room in the Longworth House Office Building, Bono approached them.