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Former Speaker of the House discusses what Hurricane Gustav means for Republicans politically. (4:17)
 

Full interview. (16:20)
 

Tavis: Pleased to be joined tonight here in St. Paul by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. He is now a frequent commentator, of course, on politics and a bestselling author whose forthcoming book is called "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less: A Handbook for Slashing Gas Prices and Solving Our Energy Needs." How timely is that? (Laughter) You planned it that way, didn't you?

Newt Gingrich: That's exactly right.

Tavis: Good to have you on the program, as always.

Gingrich: Well, it's great to be back.

Tavis: Let me start - there's so much to cover in the 15 minutes I have here. Let me start with your assessment - and I don't want to be crass about this, but it's part of our reality - how do you think, to this point, Mr. McCain and your party have handled balancing the politics with this Gustav disaster?

Gingrich: Well, let me say first of all we are talking before we know the full weight of Gustav, and so I'm hopeful that except for two relatively small levee problems outside New Orleans there's no fundamental problem. If that's true, I think - let me put it at three levels.

First of all, the president comes off much better than he did with Katrina. The governors across the region have really clearly learned a lot and they have done a great job as a team. And Governor Jindal came off, I think, in the briefing yesterday as a genuine star. And the cooperation across states from Governor Perry and Governor Barber and Governor Crist and the whole team has been just remarkable.

And then third, Senator McCain on Sunday was faced with a big problem. Here you've got thousands of delegates coming in, it's the big moment, the Democrats have just had their big moment. And do you really say to all of your delegates, "No, stand down. Forget politics; focus on America?" And I think McCain sometime early Sunday looked and just said, "We don't have any choice."

If putting country first is our slogan, and if putting country first is how he spent his lifetime, then a potential disaster - because we're lucky; if Gustav had picked up a little speed, if it had come in a little differently, we could be in a very different situation right now.

So I think he did the right thing. I'm hopeful, as you and I are talking right now, that by tomorrow we can be back on schedule and we can go back to having speeches and doing things conventions do. But I think for this moment at this particular storm, it was exactly right.

Tavis: Let me ask a follow-up, two-part question. How important was it for him to distinguish his leadership style around this storm from President Bush three years ago, and what might he gain from handling it as well as he has between now and November? Doesn't he now effectively take out of Obama's mouth the criticism that Obama has made about what happened three years ago by being able to say, "But I didn't handle it that way?"

Gingrich: Well, let me be - as you said, being crass - let me talk about the down side. Imagine that McCain had not made this decision. Imagine that Gustav had come in as bad as it could have. Imagine that tonight we were witnessing a disaster in New Orleans on a split screen with a bunch of happy Republicans bouncing around St. Paul.

It would be - you'd never recover, particularly building on Katrina, which was - as you and I have talked on the show before, was a disaster. So I think that he had to do something like this to avoid that. Now, I think it does two things, and they're very different.

I think first - and we shouldn't just talk about Republicans because it happens to be an accident that all these governors are Republican - but the fact is the quality with which Gustav is being handled I think erases about two-thirds of the Katrina memory and says, "Hey, they did learn something, we are dramatically better." These guys did a much better job.

And I think certainly Governor Perry and Governor Jindal are going to join Governor Barber, who got A-plus marks last time (unintelligible).

Tavis: Two-third's a high number, though, Speaker.

Gingrich: Yeah.

Tavis: That's a high number - two-thirds.

Gingrich: Yeah, well, there's still the chunk of it out there. I'm just saying I think for a lot of people it puts Katrina in the past and lets them say it's getting better, they learned something, they're not stupid.

The other is the country had two chances in the last 96 hours to see John McCain make a big decision - vice presidency on Friday, postponing the convention on Sunday. I think both of those were real decisions, they weren't just politics, they weren't just a new speech, and I think on Sunday he did exactly the right thing.

It wasn't a happy thing to do, it wasn't what you'd like to be doing, but I think almost everyone in the country would agree it was the right decision at the right moment, and it broke the mold. This is an historically different convention. There has never been a convention like this before.

Tavis: Is there a way to turn this into a positive? Getting off to a bad start, off to a late start, having to scrap, basically, the first day - is there a way, as this goes on this week and hopefully gets back on track, to -

Gingrich: Well, look, first of all, the whole country's watching TV right now because of Gustav, and so probably the total number of people who saw something about the convention is higher than it was for the first day of the Democrats.

Because the way the media works today, there are so many channels - as you know, because you're professional - there are so many channels that if you're talking about something they don't want to talk about, they just turn you off and go to something else.

Tavis: I know that, too.

Gingrich: Yeah, that's right. (Laughter) So you know that - so in the first place, I think a fair amount of coverage yesterday and today, not bad at all for McCain, helped move us down the road.

The real key to this convention I think is very simple: Does John McCain give a great speech on Thursday night? At least a good enough speech that people go "Got it - I understand what he's doing." He's never going to be the orator that Obama is, and he doesn't need to be. He needs to be John McCain.

Now that he's taken this extraordinary gamble, one I approve of and I support, but now that he has Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee, is her speech accepting the nomination as effective as the speech she gave last Friday when she was introduced to the country?

And then I think the third question is are the themes that McCain wants the themes that we're actually going to see? He said yesterday on Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" he had three words he wanted people to remember: Reform, prosperity and peace. If he gets that across, I think it's been a successful convention.

Tavis: Let me talk, then, to your point now more about the pick itself, before I start to pick it apart - before I start to pick the pick apart, tell me more about what you think of the pick. Because you were out early. I've started researching this - you were out early saying she would be a good pick.

Gingrich: Listen, I thought there were only two absolutely historic opportunities: Governor Jindal who's obviously, right, busy with Louisiana this week, and Governor Palin. I thought that because they represent a new generation. They are young, they are aggressive, they're courageous, they're idea-oriented, they don't pay attention to the establishment, they're inventing a new establishment, a reform establishment.

I watched Governor Palin, who started as a city councilwoman running against the incumbent mayor and defeating him. She then served as mayor for four years and then she was made chair of the energy commission in Alaska, did a terrific job of negotiating a very good deal with big oil - really pushed them against the wall and got a much better deal than they'd been giving Alaska.

Then she discovered that the Republican state chairman had been using taxpayer money for political behavior. She blew the whistle, he ended up having to resign and pay at $12,000 fine. And then she turned and she ran against the incumbent Republican governor on a reform platform, beat him in the primary, and went on to beat a former Democratic governor in the general election.

Now, this is a very smart, very competitive, and I think very courageous person who I think is the kind of person that fits the John McCain - McCain's sort of a cross between Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman. He's feisty in the way that Truman was and he's plainspoken the way Truman was, and he has the kind of reform instincts and the kind of strong national security instincts that Theodore Roosevelt had.

And when he said yesterday that she was his soul mate politically, I think he's telling the truth. This is a woman who's very much like McCain in her courage and her drive and her willingness to fight for her convictions, even if it means her own party establishment's going to be mad at her.

Tavis: Devil's advocate. Too young, too inexperienced, nothing about foreign policy, and now we hear a 17-year-old daughter who's pregnant.

Gingrich: Well, forget the last one for one second and we'll come back to it. Too young, too inexperienced, knows nothing about foreign policy. Well, I think for the Democratic presidential nominee, that's a lot. (Laughter)

Tavis: Touché. So Palin is two years younger than Obama, has had more service in public office, has had four years as a mayor to his zero, two years as a governor to his zero, two years as the head of the Alaskan National Guard to his zero, knows a heck of a lot more about energy policy than he does at a time when energy policy may be the key to our economy and the key to our national security.

So I'd say this'll be fun. I mean, I'd actually like to see a Palin-Obama debate. Forget Biden - Biden is just - do you realize that Biden became a senator when she was nine? (Laughter) I'm frankly hoping they will coach her not to humiliate him. I think we don't want a lot of sympathy for Joe Biden. I think she could beat him so bad people will think it wasn't nice.

Tavis: I'm glad you raise that, Speaker, and that's why I love talking to you. I'm glad you raised that, because my thought is the exact opposite - that if Biden doesn't back down on his strident ways, that he might come across as being overhanded with her in a debate.

Gingrich: Look, he's been on -

Tavis: You know how strident Biden is.

Gingrich: I've known Joe for years; we've debated each other for years. It's a lot of fun to debate him. He's a senator. Not like - Obama's not a real senator. Obama's a candidate who happened to be going through the Senate on his way. But Biden's a real senator, and he spent 35 years giving stunningly long speeches nobody listened to.

Somebody said the other day that if he'd been asked to give the Democratic keynote speech, we'd still be in the convention. I'm just telling you, his whole style - and it's not that he's not smart; he's very smart.

Tavis: Very smart guy, yeah.

Gingrich: Very smart guy, he knows a great deal. But his style is kind of old fashioned. I was very struck on Friday with how direct Governor Palin was - boom, boom, boom. And I think that's what the debate's going to be like. I think she's going to say, "Well, I think this and I think this and I think this."

Now it is true that Senator Biden has spent more years riding taxpayer-subsidized Amtrak than anybody else in elected history, and so he's used to the taxpayer taking care of him. But I'm not sure that that's necessarily a real qualification to become vice president.

Tavis: These one-liners are flowing like - when is this guy speaking at the convention this week? (Laughter) Let me go back to what's not so funny - and again, I love talking to you because you and I can always have honest, frank conversation - if Obama's daughters - they are not - if they were 17, either one of them, if they were old enough to have been impregnated by some guy and his daughters, his Black daughters, were impregnated right now, would this spin that she's going to marry the baby's father, she's going to keep the baby - you tackle these issues as much as anybody I know. In Black, would that spin work, politically?

Gingrich: Well, look, I think - I have seldom been more impressed with Senator Obama than today, when he spoke out bluntly and he said this shouldn't be in politics, if anybody in his campaign injects themselves into this he's going to fire them, and that family and children ought to be a step away from politics. There's no public policy part of this, so let me just start with that.

Second, I don't know what your experience is, but I'm old enough now and I have enough different relationships over the years and I know enough people - I've got in my own family, my mother was divorced and remarried, my father was divorced and remarried, I have a half-brother, I have four half-sisters. If you think back over life and you think about various things, I doubt if there - if 10 percent of the families of this country are going to sit at a table tonight or tomorrow and render a hostile judgment.

Because what they're going to say is, "This can happen," and if you are conservative as I am you admire the young lady for not getting an abortion, you admire she and her boyfriend for deciding to get married. You know it's going to be harder. You know that it's going to be more difficult, and I think their mother and father's statement is exactly right.

You admire the parents for saying, "We look forward to being a grandparent," because having a child ought to be a joyous moment, not a moment that you have to be in pain over. And having a brand new life come in should be a joyous moment. And I think that 90 percent of the country is going to say this is a part of life, it's not a part of politics, and that the Palins are doing a pretty good job of trying as parents and not potential grandparents to do the right thing, and you'll move on.

Now, you're partially right that you could make the argument about race and all that, but I'm not sure that that's as true as you think it is. I think it would be -

Tavis: Oh, come on. If I had the time, with all due - you're my friend. With all due respect, if I had the time, I could roll tape for the rest of this convention of Republican after Republican after Republican lecturing Black people about out-of-wedlock births, about making babies before they're married. You know this. Come on now, be honest. (Unintelligible)

Gingrich: Well, the Democratic Party platform that was just adopted that said fathers have to recognize that the responsibility doesn't end at conception.

Tavis: Indeed. I'm not arguing that.

Gingrich: No? Okay, but I'm just - okay, so let's start with something we agree on, okay? Which is - and this is not a Black problem - we have had over the last, oh, 50 years, starting in about 1960, a steady increase of tolerance - and it's not just an American problem.

You go to northern Europe you have a huge percent in places like Sweden of people who are now born with no framework of marriage to surround the kids. And over time, that's a real challenge, and I think there's pretty good evidence that children tend to grow up better in environments where they have both male and female figures and where there's a sense of real family.

That part - now, again, I have great respect for what Obama said today, and I'm going to pay him a very positive tribute about having said that. I can also tell you that this is - I don't think this will be around for more than three days as a political question, but it will be with the Palin family the rest of their lives. And I feel a little sad for the daughter, because all of a sudden what would have been a difficult conversation with Mom and Dad becomes a national conversation in a way that's very hard.

Tavis: I got a minute and a half. The new book, oil drilling, talk to me about it.

Gingrich: Well, we launched at American Solutions a petition drive called Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less to make the obvious point that if you used America's energy resources and you didn't have to buy oil from Venezuela or Saudi Arabia it'd be a lot less expensive.

We've had 1,500,000 people sign up for our petition at American Solutions, so we've now both written a book - "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less," which explores the whole energy crisis - it'll be out September 22nd. And then on September 27th, Solution Day, my wife Callista and I are premiering a new movie called "We Have the Power" which shows you both we have the power as people to make the government do the right thing and we have the power as Americans to not be dependent on foreign dictators for energy.

Tavis: Given that Governor Palin is now the running mate with John McCain, we're going to hear a lot more, as you can imagine, about oil drilling between now and November, and Mr. Gingrich has already weighed in on it. And as always, I'm delighted to have you on the program.

Gingrich: Great to be here.

Tavis: I'll see you around the halls the rest of the week, I'm sure.

Gingrich: All right.

Tavis: Thanks for coming in.