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In the red clay hills north of Atlanta, over the last three decades, an almost wholly new metropolitan quarter has grown up as affluent Atlanta has spread out from Ansley Park, just north of downtown, and the rolling hills of Buckhead, within the city limit, past the I-285 Perimeter into territory that was once just farms, small towns and little factory cities. Where there were perhaps 100,000 people in the 1950s, there are one million today. No longer is downtown Atlanta the only focus: the Edge Cities of Buckhead, Perimeter Center and the area near Cumberland Mall are now not just shopping but major office centers, rivaling downtown Atlanta in square footage. Cobb County around Marietta is the headquarters of Home Depot and the Weather Channel; Dunwoody in northern DeKalb County is the home of Holiday Inns. Yet physically this Golden Crescent north of the Perimeter and between I-75 in Cobb County and I-85 in Gwinnett County seems not to have changed greatly: the buildings are tree-shaded and lush foliage and large-lot requirements have given most of the communities a woodsy look.

The 6th Congressional District of Georgia occupies a large portion of this Golden Crescent north of Atlanta, including most of Cobb County, Fulton County north of the Perimeter, and to the east northern DeKalb County and a slice of Gwinnett. Its creation for the 1992 election was a recognition of the explosive growth of affluent suburban Atlanta. It would surely surprise Georgians a generation or two ago to learn that one of their congressional districts would rank among the nation's richest and most educated. The 6th ranks 11th of 435 districts in percentage of adults with a college degree, at 40%; it ranked 23d in median family income in 1990, behind districts all in larger metro areas. It is easily the most Republican district in Georgia, and by some measures one of the most heavily Republican districts in the country.

The congressman from the 6th District is Newt Gingrich, first elected in 1978, for years Georgia's lone Republican congressman, now speaker of the House of Representatives. In less than six years Gingrich moved from being a backbencher despised by Democratic House leaders and mistrusted by Republicans in the Executive Branch to a guiding figure in American politics. Gingrich grew up as the son of a Army officer, part of the career military world that in so many ways is more American than America itself. His political career, he says, dates from a visit to the ossuary at Verdun, France, where the sight of the bones of thousands of soldiers convinced him that politics matters. Gingrich went to college at Emory, got a Ph.D. in European history at Tulane, then in 1970 started teaching at West Georgia College in Carrollton. A Republican who favored civil rights, was something of an environmentalist and who was fascinated by space travel and science fiction, he ran for Congress in 1974 in a still mostly rural district south and west of Georgia, challenging the conservative Democratic incumbent as unethical. He lost narrowly, ran again in 1976 and lost again as Jimmy Carter swept rural Georgia; he persevered and won in 1978, just as House Republicans were embracing the Kemp-Roth 30% tax cut.

Although Gingrich has changed positions on a few issues like the environment, over a long career he has steadily advocated a coherent and consistent set of ideas. Gingrich is an American exceptionalist, a believer in the idea widely shared by American voters -- but widely rejected by American intellectuals -- that this is a uniquely good nation with a special mission in world history. While his liberal contemporaries disparaged traditional America in struggles over civil rights, he was living in the most integrated part of America, the career military, and during Vietnam he was married with children and saw no need to justify his lack of military service. He is a cultural conservative who believes that liberal values are destroying the lives of the poor, a market capitalist who celebrates technological innovation.

As a young Republican in a House that had been dominated by Democrats for four decades, Gingrich argued that ranking Republicans should fight Democratic bills, not try to compromise with them for a few crumbs in return, and should frontally challenge Democratic ideas. In the early 1980s he formed the Conservative Opportunity Society -- the opposite, he said, of the liberal welfare state -- and organized colleagues to give special orders speeches directed not at the House but at the C-SPAN audience. Gingrich dared to challenge Speaker Jim Wright in December 1987 by bringing the ethics charges against him which, after bitter controversy, brought Wright's resignation in June 1989. In March 1989, after Dick Cheney was appointed secretary of Defense, Gingrich ran for whip against Edward Madigan, who was next in line in the leadership and had the support of fellow Illinoisan, Minority Leader Robert Michel. But Gingrich rounded up support from conservatives, younger members, even some moderates, and won 87-85. The ranks of his opponents soon started to thin, starting with Madigan who became secretary of Agriculture.

As a child Gingrich told people his goal was to become speaker of the House, and he worked steadily and shrewdly toward that goal for 20 years, though almost no one else thought it was attainable. His courtship of Republican moderates, for example, was not just momentary but continual; he listened respectfully to their views and engaged in intellectually serious interchange. His use of ethics issues helped erode the Democrats' moral authority, but only because he was careful to make charges that stuck. Democrats attacked him for doing almost no work on legislation and dismissed his goal of achieving Republican control as ridiculous -- an argument that is obsolete now. Colleagues mistrusted him because he seemed indifferent to the professional and sometimes personal ruin he inflicted on politicians who got in his way. But Gingrich kept planning his way ahead. In 1992 he helped to engineer the ouster of Jerry Lewis and election of Dick Armey as chairman of the Republican Conference and the selection of John Kasich over Alex McMillan as ranking Republican on the Budget Committee: both would become key leaders of his Republican majority. He used the GOPAC organization, which he inherited from Delaware Governor Pete duPont to raise money to help candidates when the National Republican Congressional Committee was in financial trouble; Democrats attacked him for not disclosing donors, though the law did not require it. With logistical help from the Progress and Freedom Foundation, he taught his course "Renewing American Civilization," for three years first at Kenesaw State College, then at Reinhardt College -- both in Georgia. It was in arranging these matters that he made the mistakes which led to his House reprimand on ethics charges in January 1997. The offense stemmed from his failure to hire a tax attorney to review the unique financing of his course and from the inconsistent information he later gave the Ethics Committee, according to the panel's 7-1 ruling. GOPAC contended that the financing of the course was entirely legal, but facing a threat that he might lose his speakership if he contested the findings, Gingrich signed a statement admitting the violations. All of this led to an unprecedented $300,000 payment which Gingrich agreed to pay by January 1999, with help from a loan provided by Bob Dole. Ironically, Gingrich's aim all along was to use the college course to change the American mind; he may have had some success in his ends, but in his means he helped to turn many Americans' minds against him.

After Minority Leader Robert Michel announced his retirement in October 1993, Gingrich effectively became party leader a year before the 1994 election. He worked closely with the Clinton White House and rounded up the promised number of votes for NAFTA, which passed with 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. But he took a tough stand against the Clinton healthcare plan. He worked hard to recruit and raise money and campaign for 1994 Congressional candidates who shared his views. Although he received a lot of organizational help from other Republicans, chiefly Dick Armey, the Contract With America was Gingrich's initiative, more than anyone else's. Against conventional wisdom and the scorn of most reporters, he committed Republicans to voting on specific issues and bills; by staging a big Capitol rally September 27 and then stressing the Contract when Democrats criticized it, he helped nationalize the election and reduce the already declining political skills and institutional advantages of the Democrats. In May he thought Republicans might win House control; by August, with the Democrats' debacle on the crime and healthcare bills, he predicted they would; in November he seemed unsurprised by victory -- Republicans gained 52 seats for a 230-204 majority.

By 1996 the consensus in the press was that the Contract was highly unpopular and a big mistake. But the fact is that it enabled Gingrich to control the agenda of the new congressional majority, which otherwise would have flailed about in dozens of different directions. Ironically, for all Gingrich's ambitions to shape the national mind, he had more success as an inside-the-House legislative leader than as an outside-the-House shaper of public opinion. It should always be remembered that one possible result of legislative activity is no result at all, that majorities are not automatically assembled, that entropy is more natural than concerted action. Gingrich used the Contract, the budget process, the appropriations bills to lead the House to purposeful action. He established a good working relationship with Bob Dole -- something that was by no means inevitable -- and with Republican governors. He made one very major miscalculation when he assumed that Bill Clinton would cave in and accept the Congress's budget in 1995 and that a four-week government shutdown would not hurt Republicans politically; he had no fallback when Clinton was suddenly able to characterize himself as the purposeful, decisive preserver of government against those who would wreck it. This caused Republicans to abandon their sweeping plans as they dropped about 10% behind Democrats in generic polls (which party's candidate would you vote for for Congress?) and led to schisms with hard-line Republicans over issues such as the minimum wage and environmental laws in 1996. But the appropriations bills Clinton eventually signed that year cut non-defense discretionary spending for the first time since 1971 -- a decisive change in the trajectory of government. His Medicare reform -- routinely called "cuts" by Democrats and the press, though they would still increase spending -- is widely thought to be a political failure. Still, he predicted at the time that Medicare would make the 1996 House elections hard-fought and close, but that Republicans would win, which is what happened; and no serious student of public policy believes that Medicare can indefinitely continue on its current course without disaster. He has undeniably been a constructive force on foreign policy, trade, scientific research: policies that are important for society's long-range interests.

In July 1996, pushed by backbench Republicans, Gingrich brought forward the welfare reform package which Clinton had twice vetoed along with other bills. In doing so, he severed the cause of House Republicans from that of the lagging Dole campaign, and invited Clinton to sever his campaign's fate from that of congressional Democrats by signing the bill, an invitation Clinton, after some dithering, accepted. But more important than the transitory political effect was the effect on public policy and the public mind. By ending the entitlement to welfare, the Republican Congress and Democratic President sent a message that welfare was no longer a guarantee, and that a lifetime of dependency was no longer possible. It is probably no accident that welfare rolls peaked in 1994 and started falling with the election of the Republican Congress, just as it is no accident that interest rates peaked and then started falling again in November 1994.

"I think I am a transformational figure," Gingrich has said. But he is also a highly unpopular one. Some of this reflects the bias of a press which routinely portrays him unfairly, but not all. What is it that so many people dislike about him? A cocksureness, a professorial abstractness about policy, a more than occasional petulance and high self-regard. America after all is not a Gaullist country. Gingrich is sometimes politically tone-deaf, as when he accepted a $4.5 million book contract from Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins or when he seemed to whine that Bill Clinton left him in the back of Air Force One, unconsulted. The real problem may be that Gingrich is addicted to what The Economist calls "crunchiness"-- making plain the sharp differences between his views and those of his opponents, forcing clear choices over issues that most voters would prefer to slough over. His insistence on proclaiming traditional moral stands that would have been entirely noncontroversial in the Eisenhower era now enrages a media and educated elite -- and probably a majority of the American people -- who have staked their lives on the proposition that these moral standards can be ignored or waived, and are understandably reluctant to look at evidence of the harm that has been done. His insistence on rubbing people's noses in the failure of big government is resisted by people who have, after all, supported such big government for many years. He is a teacher, and not an entirely steady or pleasant one, whose lessons many in his audience would prefer to ignore.

Interestingly, this same popular resistance to a politician who claims with some justice to be representing the views of the people has shown up in his different districts in Georgia. The 6th District which he represented in the 1970s and 1980s covered south Atlanta suburbs near Hartsfield Airport and traditionally Democratic counties out in the country. In 1990 he nearly lost there, as Democrat David Worley attacked him for supporting the congressional pay raise and opposing government intervention in the Eastern Airlines strike; Gingrich won by only 974 votes after spending $1.5 million. In 1992, Speaker Tom Murphy tried to beat Gingrich by putting him in a new 3d District farther out from Atlanta with incumbent Democrat Richard Ray. Gingrich decided to run in the new, heavily Republican 6th District instead, but faced primary opposition from Herman Clark, who had resigned his seat in the legislature to run. Democrats joined in and urged Gingrich haters to cross party lines and vote for Clark, who attacked Gingrich for his 22 House bank overdrafts and for his "carpetbagging"; Gingrich won by only 980 votes, 51%-49%. In the general election Gingrich was also attacked on personal grounds. He won 58%-42%, comfortably but behind normal party lines. In 1994 he was opposed by former Congressman Ben Jones, running in his third district in three elections; Gingrich won 64%-36%, a wide margin but again below the party line vote here. In 1996 millionaire Michael Coles, of the Great American Cookie Company, spent liberally, $3.3 million, against Gingrich, who spent $5.5 million -- the most expensive 1996 House race; Gingrich repeated his 1992 percentage, winning 58%-42%.

It is interesting to ponder how history would have been different if Gingrich had received 1,000 fewer votes in either 1990 or 1992. It is likely that without his vision, determination and hard work Republicans would not have won their majority. Yet now that they have achieved it and despite his sweeping power, his role is not quite so essential: the machine is in motion and others have shown they are capable of taking the controls. This is why Republicans could seriously consider dumping him as speaker in early January 1997 (nine actually did vote against him), and why even after his settlement of the $300,000 payment many still wonder whether they wish to go into the election of 1998 with the burden of his unpopularity on their backs. In July 1997, Gingrich survived what National Journal's Richard E. Cohen described as a "botched coup attempt" by dissident House Republicans, including members of the leadership, who complained the speaker had been too quick to negotiate with Bill Clinton on the 1997 balanced budget deal and that Gingrich had failed to communicate a visionary strategy for the party. While Gingrich admitted to using incrementalist tactics in negotiating the budget and other bills with the administration, he did not concede his actions as a lack of vision. The future of the Republican Party, Gingrich said in August, will depend on "whether it's going to be a governing party that has confidence in itself and is prepared to pass legislation and knows that in the long run, if the liberal wing of the Democratic Party sees all of its values wiped out because the President keeps signing bills in the direction that the country needs to go, we're winning."

Under Republican rules change, Gingrich can serve no more than four terms as speaker, and he has looked forward publicly to working with a Republican president in 2001 and 2002. Meanwhile he has responded to calls for a more communicative and open style of leadership, promising to give more authority to Conference Chairman John Boehner and to appear more regularly on the House floor to field members' ideas and concerns. Gingrich has far exceeded expectations before, and his closest colleagues have realized it is unwise to underestimate the fervor of Gingrich loyalists.

Political Lineup: Pop. 1990: 586,641; 11% rural; 5% age 65+; 90% White; 6% Black; 2% Asian; 2% Hispanic origin. Households: 62% married couple families; 32% married couple fams. w. children; 70% college educ.; median household income: $46,997; per capita income: $22,181; median gross rent: $600; median house value: $120,500.

1996 Presidential Vote Dole (R) 186,084 (61%) Clinton (D) 100,714 (33%) Perot (I) 15,416 (5%)

1992 Presidential Vote Bush (R) 155,469 (55%) Clinton (D) 84,064 (30%) Perot (I) 41,959 (15%)

Rep. Newt Gingrich (R)

Elected 1978; b. June 17, 1943, Harrisburg, PA; home, Marietta; Emory U., B.A. 1965, Tulane U., M.A. 1968, Ph.D. 1971; Baptist; married (Marianne).

Career: Asst. Prof., W. GA Col., 1970-78.

DC Office: 2428 RHOB 20515, 202-225-4501; Fax: 202-225-4656; e-mail: georgia6@hr.house.gov.

District Offices: Marietta, 770-565-6398.

Committees: Speaker of the House.

Group Ratings and Key Votes: Speaker does not usually vote

Election Results
1996 gen.	Newt Gingrich (R)	174,155	(58%)	($5,577,715)
	Michael Coles (D)	127,135	(42%)	($3,325,030)
1996 prim.	Newt Gingrich (R)	unopposed
1994 gen.	Newt Gingrich (R)	119,432	(64%)	($1,817,792)
	Ben Jones (D)	66,700	(36%)	($321,774)

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