History’s Judgment

History will not have kind words for the historian. The historian I am referring to is Newt Gingrich.

He is better known for his other jobs, like being Speaker of the House and being a commentator on Fox News.

However, he has a Ph.D. is History and he taught history for several years at West Georgia College.

In Congress, Newt showed flashes of brilliance.

He was the mastermind behind the Contract with America.

The Contract was a list of campaign promises that provided a clear vision that Republican candidates running for House seats could convey to voters.

With the contract, Republicans won the majority of House seats in 1994. This victory was no small feat since the Republicans had not had a majority in the House in the previous 40 years.

After the election, the contract helped the republicans enact polices.

The Republicans were able to claim their electoral victory as evidence that voters had given Republicans a mandate to accomplish the items in the contract.

Gingrich’s political sin that History will condemn is that he pushed the House to impeach Bill Clinton.

The House impeached Clinton on one count of perjury and another of obstruction of justice.

Both charges were based on information the Congress received from Independent Counsel Ken Starr.

Starr was originally appointed to investigate the Whitewater real estate deal, but the charges he forwarded to Congress had to do with Bill Clinton’s attempted cover-ups of his sexual improprieties.

Newt Gingrich seemed to push for impeachment because he did not think that Clinton was a suitable person to hold the highest office in the land.

Newt believed that Clinton did not have the moral fiber to be president.

Flash forward about 20 years.

The roles are reversed. Today, the democrats do not believe that President Trump is fit to be President.

Many democratic senators and congressional representatives have openly called for Trump’s impeachment.

In the Clinton era, the republicans had an independent counsel performing a free ranging investigation that eventually came up with something that the republicans could use to impeach Clinton.

Today, the democrats have a similar situation.

There is an independent counsel conducting a wide-ranging investigation of Trump.

Many democrats hope that Mueller finds something that allows them to proceed with an impeachment vote.

The travesty in both historical episodes is that some members of Congress have sought to use impeachment as a way to get rid of Presidents that they simply did not like.

This was a power grab by the Congressional leaders. They took it upon themselves to correct a mistake that they thought voters had made.

This level of arrogance does not serve our country well.

Elections are the best vehicle for replacing bad leaders.

If Congressional leaders do not like the results of a presidential election, they should spend their efforts convincing voters of their position rather than taking matters into their own hands.

History will not look kindly on Newt because he invoked a process for attempting to remove an unpopular president that lies outside of the normal process of electoral accountability. Unfortunately, his extreme steps have made impeachment seem like a reasonable alternative today.

An added tragedy of Newt Gingrich’s colossal failure is that he should have known better.

A professor of History should be able to put today’s events in the proper context by looking at how the country has dealt with previous unpopular presidents.

A current situation is almost never as bad or as unique as people at the time fear. The great value of having someone with a Ph.D. in history in Congress is that the person should be able to bring wisdom and good judgement to the current political worries.

Despite his background, Newt Gingrich failed the country despite having all the tools — at least on paper — that should have allowed him to succeed.