Schroeder: Well, he certainly tries to draw that impression for himself. The very interesting thing is that when you first hear him spout out all his ideas, you think that's interesting. Then the next time you hear it, it sounds almost the same. Then you start thinking about it and you think, can you connect the dots? And they don't connect. He kind of just fire-hoses you with a whole range of issues and bits and pieces of information. It's almost like electric shock to the body. There's no way that it hangs together or fits as an ideology. I think we've had many speakers with lots of ideas, to be perfectly honest. But they haven't been out trying to market them twenty-four hours a day. They've been trying to run the House instead of trying to market their ideas. He has interesting ideas but they seem to be different from what's going on inside the House. You're not quite sure; it's almost dysfunctional. It's not attached and he doesn't attach them either.

Q: So you think that it's lacking a kind of connective, philosophical [tissue]? Is there, in your mind, such a thing as a Gingrich philosophy? His idea of American Civilization for example?

Schroeder: Oh my. I would start at the Gingrich Philosophy which is, I think, to promote Newt Gingrich. That's his philosophy. His idea of civilization becomes a very strange one. He talks about people having honeymoons on the moon. He talks about getting lap-top computers for every child in America's schools and at the same time you're cutting school lunches. So if you don't have money for school lunches and if you're throwing kids on a head-start, where are you going to get the money for the lap-tops? And if you're gunning the science programs in the schools, what are these kids going to do with the lap-tops? You're going to need science teachers and people who will teach you how to use them. It's not just getting the equipment. They need somebody who can instruct them and have all this fit into a context. He just rapid fires all that out. But it doesn't add up and it doesn't compute when you put a pencil to it.

Q: But I wonder, as a political opponent of the current speaker, to what degree would you grant his efficacy as a speaker? He has surprised many by his ability to run the institution.

Schroeder: I think the interesting question is -- who do you run the place for? And Tip O'Neill, he thought he was really running it for the people. People may say that sounds really arrogant, but I think Tip O'Neill really understood America as family. He really felt America as family. He felt pain if he thought we couldn't do enough for young kids through whatever was going on, or America's seniors or whatever. I think other speakers, to some lesser degree, have had that same amount of compassion. Newt has run this like a machine and he has run it for Newt. I think he's been selling the speakership in a way that, to me, is very brazen. He's out doing book sales, taking the Capital Hill police with him, shuffling around with this entourage. He's then whining about the fact that the President didn't talk to him on the plane coming back from the Rabin funeral. But he's the only guy that got to take his wife. Mrs. Bush didn't get to go and the reason was that his wife had business in Israel. I find that really smarts. Tip O'Neill would never insist that his wife go on a foreign mission to a funeral because of business, nor would any of the other speakers that I've served under.

So, it's a nuance. It's a matter of degree. Yeah, I suppose you can do that; it's legal maybe. I hope. I don't know. It doesn't sound very ethical to me. But it's just so brazen and so out there. The reason he has rammed things through here is what he's been doing for the entire time he got here -- sending out training tapes, trying to get people to run, hyping them all this stuff that he did through his GOPAC, his group that he put together, so that when they come here it's really clear that they're the lieutenants and he's the general and he will have them march. And he's convinced them that this is an evil city and you don't want to be here any longer than you have to. You come and vote fast and do what I tell and then get out of town. None of them stand up to him. If he says eat the right foot, they start eating the right foot; they don't even add salt unless they're given permission.

So, if you really want that kind of efficiency machine, fine. Prior speakers in the Democratic Party listened to Republicans and listened to Democrats. And they never had all the Democrats vote with them and they clearly never had all the Republicans vote with them. But they had a concept --this country was very complex, it's very difficult to wrap yourself around both Mississippi and Alaska, Hawaii and California and Maine. So, you needed to listen. They didn't have this self-confidence, you could say, or you could say arrogance, that they knew everything and therefore you were the only one anybody needed to listen to. They realized that they got elected from the district no bigger than mine. No speaker ever gets elected from a district any bigger than any other members. Isn't that interesting?

Q: There has been an aspect of party loyalty particularly among the young, new members that's rather astonishing. And obviously it was for practical, perhaps even cynical reasons, but turning the institution on its head in terms of committee assignments and all of that pays off, doesn't it, when it comes down to voting?

Schroeder: This is a man who has figured out how to exercise power. In other words, he said no Republican gets to vote on who's the next chairman, which is how we do it on the Democratic side. We're not going to do it on seniority, which is how we used to do it. [He said,] 'I'm going to pick.' Well now, if you suddenly let the Speaker of the House pick all the people who get to be chairman then of course there's going to be discipline on his side. And you have just changed the whole way that you rip the body. On our side, under prior speakers, for every bill you had to go around and talk to members and find out where they were on the idea, the idea that everybody brought a different perspective and we should listen. This speaker, no, no, no. If you're going to deviate from the speaker's line then you've got to get permission from the speaker otherwise your head's going to be on a tray. Your committee chairmanship could be taken away.

So, you now have this very interesting thing where you have the committee chairmen saying, 'I hate this bill; I don't believe in this but I'm voting for it.' I have people everyday saying that they hate what they're doing and that it's awful but they're voting for it. And you think, 'What did you do? Did you all have spine removals? Did you all turn into jellyfish?' But the reality is that no they haven't. But Newt has taken all that power for himself and they let him do it.