Reviewed by: Newt Gingrich: The Rise and Fall of a Party Entrepreneur by Matthew N. Green and Jeffrey Crouch Andrew E. Busch Newt Gingrich: The Rise and Fall of a Party Entrepreneur. By Matthew N. Green and Jeffrey Crouch. Congressional Leaders. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2022. Pp. xiv, 287. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-7006-3326-5.) For many years, students of American politics have elaborated on how various members of Congress act either as procedural entrepreneurs who devote themselves to reforming the way Congress does business, or as legislative entrepreneurs who prioritize enshrining their preferred policies in legislation. In Newt Gingrich: The Rise and Fall of a Party Entrepreneur, political scientists Matthew N. Green and Jeffrey Crouch identify a third type of congressional entrepreneur, who devotes unusual resources to building the strength of his party. They have produced a richly researched, insightful, and evenhanded account of Newt Gingrich's long drive to win and then maintain a majority for House Republicans. Their account follows Gingrich from his first election to the House of Representatives from Georgia in 1978 and finds that party entrepreneurship consistently explains his career both before and during his stint as Speaker of the House. The story is told in five stages. During the first period, 1979–1984, Gingrich was the "Entrepreneurial Outsider"—a backbencher whose ambition far exceeded his resources, and who had little to show for his efforts (chap. 1). He nevertheless planted the seeds of future success by forming the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS) of like-minded House Republicans. He gained his footing in the second stage, 1985–1989, when, as an "Ascendant Party Warrior," he built up the COS and inherited control of Pete DuPont's GOPAC, an external structure to build support around the country (chap. 2). Gingrich also won respect within the Republican conference by bringing down Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas. In the third stage, the Georgian became an "Entrepreneurial Insider," entering the House Republicans' leadership when he was narrowly elected party whip after Dick Cheney left to become President George H. W. Bush's secretary of defense (chap. 3). In the election of 1994, Gingrich reached his goal of a party majority and his own speakership, leading to a two-year period of "Promise and Pitfalls" (chap. 4). He won impressive policy victories but also was outmaneuvered by President Bill Clinton. Finally, 1997–1998 represented "A Failing Speakership," marked by a loss of Republican House seats in the 1998 election and Gingrich's own resignation (chap. 5). From 1978 to 1998, Gingrich did not really change. He was driven to win a majority for Republicans and was convinced that hard-hitting differentiation from Democrats on both policy and ethical issues was the way to achieve it. He succeeded by drawing other House Republicans to him, many (but not all) of them junior, who became convinced over time that accommodation and compromise with Democrats was unfruitful. Gingrich was aided tremendously by the high-handed approach of the House Democrats themselves, who increasingly abused their majority power. Another consistent thread through Gingrich's career was his relative lack of attention to organizational detail and his tendency to pursue lofty goals well beyond the reach of the means at his disposal. He had barely entered Congress when he informed his staff that his job was "to save Western civilization" (p. 23). By the time he became Speaker, his resources had grown tremendously, but even then, as Green and Crouch note, "Gingrich was never going to be able to [End Page 465] run the entire federal government from the House of Representatives, let alone shift all of society in a conservative direction" (p. 166). In the end, the authors assess Gingrich's importance carefully. He was a consequential Speaker whose impact continues today, but he fell short of his most ambitious objectives. He was hardly solely responsible for turning the House into a more partisan, more media-conscious institution. Those trends had already begun, and Gingrich was a creature of them as well as their promoter. [End Page 466] Andrew E. Busch Claremont McKenna College Copyright © 2024 The Southern Historical Association

Did Donald Trump create a new blueprint for Republicans, ruin the Grand Old Party, or something in between? And what, if anything, should his role be in the future of the party? In this collection of timely essays, a variety of center-right political scientists and commentators address Donald J. Trump’s past effects and future role in the Republican Party. Covering policy, politics, character, and comportment, the authors offer a wide range of analyses and recommendations. Essays range from Trump’s place in historical context to analyses of contemporary voting behavior to efforts to disentangle Trump’s policies from his persona.

The Lost Soul of the American Presidency: The Decline into Demagoguery and the Prospects for Renewal. By Stephen F. Knott. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2019. 312p. $39.95 cloth. - Volume 18 Issue 2

This chapter begins with painting a broad picture of campaigns and elections in the United States. It introduces a new element—campaign ethics—and revisits the phenomenon of the "permanent campaign". A discussion of campaigns and elections from an ethical standpoint provides standards for judging the health of the system. The permanent campaign allows us to explore the nexus between campaigning and governing and the future of both. Campaigns and elections are among the most important events in the life of a democracy. Campaigns help the citizenry come to a collective decision about who should control the levers of power in the country and elections make the use of those levers legitimate. The permanent campaign was perfected in the Bill Clinton administration and showed no signs of abating under either George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Polling is a significant aspect of the permanent campaign.

"Citizen Soldier: A Life of Harry S. Truman. By Aida D. Donald. (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2012. Pp. xvi, 265. $26.99.)." The Historian, 78(1), pp. 89–90

Chapter 6 Reagan and the Evolution of American Politics, 1981–1989 Andrew E. Busch, Andrew E. BuschSearch for more papers by this author Andrew E. Busch, Andrew E. BuschSearch for more papers by this author Book Editor(s):Andrew L. Johns, Andrew L. JohnsSearch for more papers by this author First published: 13 February 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118607770.ch6 AboutPDFPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShareShare a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Summary Ronald Reagan's role as a political leader at the center of the transformation of American politics has a number of important facets. A number of authors have evaluated Reagan as a political leader in the context of the key events of the 1980s. Research with a more specific focus is considered in this chapter. In one sense, Reagan can be viewed as a party leader, the titular head of the Republican Party during his presidency. The 1980s saw the maturation of the conservative movement in the United States; Reagan's role as party leader coexisted with another role, as honorary head of that movement. Undoubtedly the elections of the 1980s were among the key political events of the era and have spawned a considerable literature, starting with the election of 1980. Overall, Reagan aimed—with considerable success throughout the 1980s—to fashion a new and more powerful Republican coalition in the electorate. A Companion to Ronald Reagan RelatedInformation

Journal Article The President’s Legislative Policy Agenda, 1789–2002 Get access The President’s Legislative Policy Agenda, 1789–2002 by Jeffrey E. Cohen. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2012. 260 pp. $29.99. Andrew E. Busch Andrew E. Busch Claremont McKenna College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 129, Issue 1, Spring 2014, Pages 144–145, https://doi.org/10.1002/polq.12152 Published: 21 March 2014

Periods of American politics marked by recognizable surges of ideas and activists are not driven solely by winners. Barry Goldwater and George McGovern were among the biggest losers in the history of American presidential elections, yet they produced surges that continue to affect American politics decades later. These losing candidates had three things in common: 1) Their candidacies represented more than individual attempts to gain the presidency, 2) they altered their parties' electoral coalitions and strategies, and 3) they each made distinctive arguments that laid the groundwork for future party and movement successes.

The election of 1948 was many things: an upset win by Harry S. Truman that stunned the nation, the first presidential election of the postwar era, the first after the United States had become an undisputed superpower, the first of the Cold War, and the first since 1876 in which black civil rights was a major issue. As historian Thomas W. Devine shows, it was also the last gasp of the so-called “Popular Front” alliance between American Communists and progressives. The 1948 third-party campaign by Henry A. Wallace has been the subject of many previous studies. The iconic study on the campaign, the three-volume Gideon’s Army by former Wallace campaign worker Curtis D. MacDougall (1965), painted Wallace in a largely favorable light and downplayed the influence of Communists in the movement. Karl M. Schmidt, a former activist in Progressive Youth for America, similarly argued for Wallace’s independence and for the influence of his campaign in forcing Truman’s administration to the left (Henry A. Wallace: Quixotic Crusade, 1960). Others subsequently took up the pen to assert the benign character of Wallace’s campaign; see, for instance, Norman D. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the People’s Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941–1948 (1973). A number of scholars and participants in the events disputed this view. For example, Allen Yarnell argued that Wallace had little influence on Truman (Democrats and Progressives: The 1948 Presidential Election as a Test of Postwar Liberalism [1974]), while former Communist Party member Joseph R. Starobin indicted Wallace’s campaign as having been heavily infiltrated by Communists (American Communism in Crisis, 1943–1957 [1972]). Until now, the lines drawn up by Wallace’s supporters and detractors in the 1960s and 1970s have largely remained in place. In this richly textured, exhaustively researched, and nuanced study, Devine offers an analysis that does not quite fit any previous narrative. He traces the interaction of American Communists, the Soviets, liberals, unions, and Wal-