Ever the Speaker

"He's a dynamic person that can rally a lot of intellectual firepower around him. He has a new idea every five seconds," says prickly Texas Republican Tom DeLay -- a frequent Gingrich detractor who resigned as House majority leader last year to fight charges of campaign law violations.

"But I think when people take a look at what he's really saying, he's going to have a hard time with conservatives. He's trying to appeal to everyone and cover up who he really is -- which is typical of Newt."

DeLay cites Gingrich's recent love-fest with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) during what was supposed to have been a debate about global warming. The two not only ended up hugging trees, they almost hugged each other. "He's not in sync with the base of the party," DeLay insists. "Take his whole American Solutions idea. I'm very skeptical about finding solutions for government. Government is the problem, not the solution."

Still, Gingrich has been carefully cultivating key Republican constituencies, especially Christian activists who might balk at nominating a formerly liberal Mormon who claims to have seen the light and abandoned at least his ideological apostasy (former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney) or a pro-abortion rights, pro-gun control, occasionally cross-dressing, thrice-married Yankees fan (former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani). Never mind poor Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), sinking in the polls as though lashed to an anchor.

"I like John," Gingrich says, "but the combination of McCain-Feingold [the widely despised campaign finance law] and McCain-Kennedy [the hated immigration bill] is a tad heavy." Since the Supreme Court just carved up the former, and a raucous grass-roots insurgency deep-sixed the latter, it might seem Gingrich is on to something here.

As for former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, expected to announce a run for the presidency this week, "I think he becomes the establishment alternative," Gingrich says. "I've been fond of Fred ever since 'The Hunt for Red October.' I think he was totally convincing as an admiral."

What about Thompson's reputation for being the opposite of a workaholic? "I don't think it's a matter of working all that hard and being all that intense if he can put together a fairly bold, Sarkozy-like program," Gingrich says, referring to the just-elected center-right president of France. "Fred is not Ronald Reagan, but he could be Dwight Eisenhower." But could he have organized D-Day? "No," Gingrich chuckles, "but Eisenhower couldn't have been in 'The Hunt for Red October.' "

Gingrich, for his part, dismisses warnings that October will be too late for a non-billionaire to jump into the race and raise the necessary cash. "Do you know the approximate size of the U.S. economy? About $14 trillion. Annually. And how much money has been raised in politics? Hillary peaked in the first quarter with $26 million. If you assume we live in a limited universe of relatively impoverished people who can afford to contribute to only one candidate, then I will probably not find any supporters on October 1.

"But if you assume we live in a country of 300 million people, a substantial number of whom will not have contributed to anybody, we'll have to see. Assume for a minute that one of the three front-runners collapses. How many supporters does that make available? Assume for a minute that none of them catch fire."

Enter Newt? It's a testament to Gingrich's belief in endless possibility that in May he traveled to the late Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., to give a commencement speech inveighing against the evils of "radical secularism." (Last year he published a book on the subject, "Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation's History and Future.")

A Lutheran-turned-Southern Baptist, a native Pennsylvanian who made his political career in Atlanta, Gingrich likes to attend Mass with his Catholic wife (who sings in the choir at Washington's Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception). He had already taken the extraordinary step of going on right-wing evangelical leader James Dobson's radio show to admit committing the sin of adultery prior to tying the knot with his third wife -- who, when the married speaker of the House took up with her, was a 30ish, sylphlike Agriculture Committee clerk named Callista Bisek. (In August, they'll celebrate their seventh wedding anniversary. "This time it's really love," says Gingrich's friend, former representative Steve Gunderson of Wisconsin, Callista's boss before she joined the committee staff.)

In a riveting moment of political theater, Dobson grilled Gingrich on "the rumors . . . that you were in an affair with a woman obviously who wasn't your wife at the same time that Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky were having their escapade." Gingrich manfully replied: "Well, the fact is that the honest answer is yes." Then he tried to draw distinctions between himself and Clinton, noting that House Republicans impeached the president for felony perjury, not sex. Dobson, a psychologist by training, brushed aside Gingrich's quibbles.