Reviews for Contract with America

The average rating for Contract with America based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-05-11 00:00:00 John Johnson Newt Gingrich, hyper-partisan hack and author of the book “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” (which, in light of the BP oil spill disaster, reflects just how very, very shortsighted and wrong an individual can be) wrote a book promoting the environment?!? Given the anti-environmental rhetoric coming from the right wing coupled with their abysmal track record over the past 30 years regarding environmental protection who woulda thunk it? Yet Gingrich has tried to do just that in “A Contract with the Earth” a bullet-point filled book which outlines his vision to restore the environment. Though the book didn’t get much attention when it came out in 2007 and the republican party has yet to stand up for environmental protection, it is at least a start. Given that economic security, family values and the other things the wingers value cannot occur if the environment collapses it’s about time one of them has begun to talk about it, even if only briefly and even if he was largely ignored. Gingrich does seem to understand that the environment is important. He’s got the green rhetoric down and when speaking in generalizations is largely indistinguishable from a dirty tree-hugging hippy. The main difference comes in terms of solutions and he seems to believe that private industry and technology, spurred by government incentives will ride in like the cavalry to remake the planet into a green Eden. His rationale goes like this …. as individuals become more prosperous they demand a cleaner environment, therefore as countries become richer they will naturally become greener. There’s a grain of truth here. Americans don’t participate in slash and burn agriculture since we don’t rely on it for subsistence. The failure of the logic, however, is easily demonstrated by the fact that the US is richer now than it’s ever been. By applying Newt’s premise that richer is greener you’d expect the environment to be significantly improving on every front. Instead we see continued loss of biodiversity, ever higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions, collapse of fisheries and an oil spill that threatens the southeast coastline. Richer doesn’t necessarily mean greener, if fact it probably enables ever increasing levels of consumption which only creates further stresses. On the positive side, technology certainly does have a role to play in minimizing the human-caused damage to the planet, particularly since technology has also been the cause of so much environmental degradation. The problem is that technology alone, in the absence of behavioral and regulatory changes, is unlikely to go far enough to address the large scale environmental problems we face. With that said, Newt’s half measures are worth pursuing (in conjunction with other measures) and maybe they could be used to provide the basis for a bipartisan discussion to begin to address environmental issues.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-11-26 00:00:00 Mike Riz I had a hard time believing I was reading a book written by Newt Gingrich. It sounded like it might have been co-authored by Al Gore. Written late in President Bush's second term, but read as we're nearing the 2012 Presidential primary period, I sense that Newt has now seemed to have backed away from much of what was written in this book. As the GOP 2012 Presidential Primaries are beginning, it appears that Gingrich recognizes that the positions taken when he wrote this book probably won't fly with the more conservative wing of the Republican Party. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, for one, in December, 2011, released an ad questioning Gingrich's "serial hypocrisy" and quoting newspaper articles, pundits and conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh to illustrate Gingrich's numerous policy changes. The Paul ad began with a commercial Gingrich shot with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in 2008 promoting bipartisan solutions to climate change. In December, 2011, Gingrich now says that making that ad "was probably the single dumbest thing" he's ever done. Yet in this book, Gingrich wrote that climate change is supported by a wealth of scientific data derived from a diversity of measurement techniques. Political posturing aside, Gingrich seemed sincere in his writing, so it's probable that during the Primaries, Newt is following the advice of political advisors and reaching out to the most conservative wing of the Party to try to win the nomination, and may back off positions contrary to those listed in his book should he win the nomination and then try adopt a more center to right of center position to appeal to more of the Independents. Aside from now wondering about Newt's change in feelings and original reason for writing the book, the other part of the book I didn't like was the endless platitudes vs. practical working solutions offered. Most of the ideas were things like "we all need to do better", " we need to respected the environment", "we need to foster better cooperation between government and the private sector", etc. But if you get through the somewhat superficial elements in the book, there are some decent ideas offered. I just no longer know whose ideas these are, and what direction Newt will take if he does get back into a position of political leadership.