Gingrich’s inspiration

After transporting readers back in time with historical novels set during the Civil War and World War II, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and historian William R. Forstchen have released “To Try Men’s Souls: A Novel of George Washington and the Fight for American Freedom.”

Mr. Gingrich, who, as reported last week in The Washington Times, plans to evaluate his prospects for a 2012 presidential bid, stressed that his story’s protagonist, the country’s first commander in chief, is an especially resonant profile in courage in these uncertain times.

“America is a country based on a series of miraculous events defined by the people who lived through them,” Mr. Gingrich explained to an overflow crowd at a book-signing event last week at Mount Vernon, Washington’s plantation home in Virginia. “We’re given a story in which the heroic elements verging on the miraculous are so factual that we thought it would give people new hope and new possibility.”

The idea for “To Try Men’s Souls” had been percolating for more than a decade, but Mr. Gingrich recalled that last fall, as the economic crisis deepened and an epic presidential election loomed, he, his publisher and his co-author concluded that 2009 offered the optimal publication window.

“I thought this would be a time in history when people were demoralized — increasingly high unemployment with an aggressively left-wing administration trying to fundamentally replace our core values,” he explained.

Mr. Gingrich said the recent backlash against the administration via “tea party” protests is a uniquely American expression, adding that “bills being drafted in secret and town-hall meetings being canceled” remind him of the British “arrogance” that launched the American Colonies on the path to revolution.

“Something has aroused some deep fundamental American sense which you capture in the revolutionary period,” he said.

Although there are political parallels, Mr. Gingrich is quick to note that the 18th-century rebels had it far worse.

“Grow up! You think this is hard?” he rhetorically asked the crowd, referring to the present-day debates over health care and government spending.

Mr. Gingrich patiently signed books for scores of visitors, attracted less by the former House speaker’s current political message than by a special affinity for Revolutionary War heroes and the man known as the Father of Our Country.

“He was so ahead of his time,” said Kitty Burke of Portsmouth, Va., an ardent Washington admirer, who attended the signing.

“He was center of the universe. He created our government,” added Ben Stefanski, who had come all the way from Cleveland for the event.

“For so many years, he was a marble man. Books like this help us see him as an actual human being,” explained conservative pundit Tony Blankley, a longtime aide to Mr. Gingrich, a columnist and former editor of this paper’s editorial page.

Washington was “the most important leader, but the hardest to understand of all the American presidents,” reflected Mr. Gingrich, who first became fascinated with the first president during his boyhood in Harrisburg, Pa., on the knee of “my grandmother Daughtery, who taught me to read.”

“The more you study Washington, the more impressive he becomes.”

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