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Vander Jagt: [Chuckles] The only Republican who can compete with him in terms of turning an audience into absolute standing on their chairs, is Colin Powell. Powell also has the ability to move an audience.

Q: [Reagan?]

Vander Jagt: [Reagan?] I've stood on the steps of the Capitol with every candidate for the House and the Senate and we took a pledge, and we said, 'If you give us a chance to govern for the first time in 24 years, we will (1) strengthen defense, (2) cut taxes, reduce about five things.' Well, Newt did that. And he couldn't get the Reagan campaign to go along. He couldn't get the Senate campaign to go along, but he got it going so well in the House that pretty soon the Reagan campaign said, 'Can we join in with you?' which Newt had predicted when we got the first turndown from the Reagan campaign. He said, 'They'll be with us.' But that was Newt back in '80. And that was the baby Contract With America.

Q: One of the things he agreed to do when he first came to Congress was to go on the Administration Committee which is a sort of an unsexy place to be, but useful in some ways. Would you tell me about that?

Vander Jagt: The Administration Committee is thought of by most Congressmen as a dog, you know that it's a bone you throw at somebody. It's a throw-away because it is not thought of as a legislative committee. However, the House Administration Committee doles out the perks and privileges of members, things like the parking spots, which become enormously important in some cases. In fact, Wayne Hayes, who was one of the most powerful members ever to serve in the House, achieved that power largely as Chairman of the House Administration Committee, and he used that power brutally and arrogantly in order to bend the institution to his will. I suspect that way back then Newt was smart enough to realize that the House Administration Committee, which doles out things that members really care about, was not a throw-away committee. But it was very important indeed.

Q: Help me understand this GOPAC. It's not just 'Here's GOPAC. Here's another way to shovel dough down the throats of these campaigns.' Rather it was another way of sort of providing political assets that had nothing directly to do with money but with --what? How could you guys help then and now to get a guy elected to Congressman?

Vander Jagt: Most of the media across America absolutely misses the point regarding GOPAC. They think it was a device to funnel money into campaigns. We developed ways of doing that in other ways. GOPAC was not the instrument.

So they all missed the story on GOPAC. GOPAC was originally established to recruit Republican candidates to run for state legislatures, some city councils, in order to create a farm system of Congressional candidates. Newt took it beyond that. And it was primarily an educational and instructional organization where Newt would send out the tapes. He is an eloquent speaker and usually his speeches are the result of a tremendous number of focus groups and getting just the right language. So in 1994 you had hundreds of Republican candidates driving from campaign appearance A to campaign appearance B listening to Newt on those tapes and so the net result was that Republicans were running a unified whole. They were all singing notes from the same set of music.

Q: And one result of that is a certain discipline and a certain uniformity of purpose and I guess in some ways that can be traced back to what you just told us--

Vander Jagt: Absolutely. They were being educated by the speaker on the party line, even before the speaker was the speaker. So they came, filled with his instruction. They also caught the vision that I had in 1978 of Newt, this Don Quixote, who believed in an impossible dream. He somehow communicated that to them through GOPAC. Just last night I was with a group of Congressmen talking about how things are going and it never ceases to amaze me that they want to win this next election. But they don't really care. Their purpose is not to get reelected. They came here to change the direction of America. And if it means that they lose, fine. A lot of them just believe that deeply. A lot of them also don't even like it here. They don't like Washington. They'd rather be back home. It's a totally new breed. Until this time, most Congressmen were dedicated night and day to their own reelection. [But] it isn't that important to the heart and soul of that Republican freshman class and many others who share that Newt Gingrich dream of changing America's direction.

When the Congressmen are doing that, by the way, it's closed, there's no staff. This is a little group like Chowder and Marching and SOS and it's just Congressmen. And you go and you really let your hair down. So they're not trying to impress anybody --'This may cost me my seat. I don't care. I want to get this done.' I think you always have to take politicians with a grain of salt, when they say things publicly, like, 'I'm not running again because I want to spend more time with my family.' And they would say things like that out on the stump. But you know America's future's more important than my fate. But here they're really saying it from the heart and a lot of them are different.

Q: And you get the feeling that with many of them, that is quite literally the case and were it not the case, much of what has happened wouldn't be possible. Some of these folks have come from a sense of 'I'm here to cast this vote and go home.'

Vander Jagt: That's exactly right.