Stevenson’s army, January 18, late edition

I’ve now found data reinforcing my longstanding belief that Newt Gingrich, more than any other person, is responsible for the rise of toxic partisanship.  [There are other factors, of course, but Gingrich was at the leading edge.]
Princeton Prof Julian Zelizer ably described how Gingrich used the theme of corruption to destroy public trust in Congress and vault the GOP into control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. The Georgia congressman openly said, “We have to destroy the House in order to save it.”  He certainly achieved the destruction, but we have never seen the salvation.
Last week Kevin Drum posted a chart based on Pew surveys  showing the decline in trust of government among Republicans and Democrats. [I can’t seem to be able to copy and paste the chart, so please look.] It shows a sharp drop in the early 1990s, in both parties, offset by a post-9/11 resurgence of trust, followed by the declines linked to the forever wars and the Democratic distrust of Bush and then GOP distrust of Obama.
It didn’t have to be this way. Politics cold have been about policy rather than personality. But Gingrich and his acolytes weaponized peccadilloes [the House bank, postage allowances]  and found that it worked politically. How ironic that Donald Trump convinced his supporters that he had “drained the swamp” when he appointed lobbyists in charge of agencies they had lobbied for private clients.
Gingrich is also responsible for hyperpartisanship in another way:  many of his Young Turks later became Senators, bringing their House majoritarianism and take-no-prisoners style into the upper chamber.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).