September 15, 2019 • 25 mins
Newt interviews his daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, about growing up in a political family and her new book, Our Broken America: Why Both Sides Need to Stop Ranting and Start Listening. The book is available for pre-order now, and will be in stores Tuesday, September 17.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, This is newt Twenty twenty is going to be
one of the most extraordinary election years of our lifetime.
I want to invite you to join my Inner Circle
as we discuss each twist and turn in the presidential race.
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(01:05):
On this episode of News World, I really feel delighted,
both professionally and personally to have this chance to introduce
to you my daughter, Jackie Ingrish Cushman. She's now written
her third book, which I think is a really really
important book, called Our Broken America. Why both sides Need
(01:25):
to stop ranting and start listening, and I think there's
a lot of wisdom in it. I'm so proud of
how she has grown as a mother, raising our two grandchildren,
and the process of both a professional and working and
as a local citizen. So for me, it's both an
honor but in a very very distinct pleasure to welcome
(01:46):
her as my guest. Jackie, I am thrilled that you
were here. Well, thank you so much, Dad, I really
appreciate it. It's kind of fun actually to be here
(02:06):
with you in person. I'm very excited because I think
you have a pretty big deal coming out in September.
I'm so excited about my new book, Are Broken America.
While both sides need to stop ranting and start listening. Now,
as you know, part of my career was made of ranting,
so I had to read the book and sort of
learn some new lessons. But tell me this, you've really
(02:28):
put together, I think, a very profound book about how
to actually get us out of the emotional gridlock we're in.
How did you come to the understanding? Well, a couple
of things. One, I have two children that are now
once in college and in high school, and watching them
grow up in the last two decades, and then watching
our political environment, and then pulling those two items together
(02:50):
in terms of how do you deal with a lot
of conflicts, how do you work in ways in which
you can look forward to be optimistic. That's really what
drove me to write this book, Broken America. We need
to work together as the country, and to do that,
we have to change how we're thinking and interacting with
each other. Part of what you put in here, which
I was very touched by, is what it was like
(03:10):
to grow up as my daughter and to be in
politics almost for the time you were born. What was
that like To sit down and turn and write that
out and recounted for other people, It was hard, quite frankly.
I mean it's people have asked me, what's it like
to be nuking with his daughter? And my response is
always that's who I am, So I don't know any
(03:30):
other reality. That's who I am as a person. But
people have so many preconceived notions of what that means.
And really it was a very basic childhood. We lived
in a small town, We went to church a lot,
we went to high school football games, and then we
campaigned a lot. But to me, it's really important to
understand that some of must of what we did as
a family was about learning and working hard well and
(03:51):
back recently, I was looking at some pictures when you
were like it swere or four years old, of you
and your sister, and it's really kind of hard to
imagine that that little grew up into you. To know
you today, where you're so outgoing, so confident, it's almost
impossible to imagine how basically shy you were. I was
the child that sat in a classroom at school and
(04:12):
read a book during class. Then I read a book
during lunch. But then again, we were the family that
we would sit around and all four of us would read.
I mean, that's what we did as our hobby. And
quite frankly, I still read a lot today. It's part
of what shaped who I am and how I think.
So I think that reading is incredibly important. I remember
(04:34):
watching your daughter, Maggie. I think she was about nine
at that point, and we were off somewhere and she
brought like five books with her, and you know her
and I still I have to confess, and I'm still
the same way. Both of my children take books wherever
they go. They're both voracious readers like Yell did. Was
Kathy and I. Our children started reading very early. We
(04:55):
read to them for ages until they could read. And
I remember one night Robert was very and I was
reading to him, and I think he was pretending to read,
or maybe he was reading a little bit, but at
some point he goes, Mommy, I don't really like to read.
I just do it to make you happy. And I said, well, honey,
do they keep doing it? Because Matthew doesn't love to
read and reading is one of the best ways to learn.
(05:16):
Your sister, who's just a couple of years older than you,
I've sort of provided a shadow. You could let her
be the more aggressive, which is people knowing the two
of you now would never believe that you let her
take the lead so much, because I think you've grown
into a neighbor friend, civic worker, intellectual, professional businesswoman if
(05:37):
they'd seen you back then. And you really see it
in some of those very early pictures, So the younger
daughter walking around near your big sister. That funny thing
is when we were younger, we looked so much alike
the macimber. One time Mom should be a picture. She's like, oh, look,
you're so cute, and I look in the back of
my mom, I wasn't even born yet, that's Kathy. So
we did look so much alike. And at one point,
(05:59):
I think around maybe high school or maybe early college.
We try to pass for twins occasionally, but that was
part of the you know, kind of what shaped me.
And quite frankly, you know, if push comes to shove,
I'm still very happy to let Kathy take the lead.
She's an incredible sister, very smart, very hard working. Quite frankly,
without her help, this book would not have gotten written.
You used to talk much faster than you do now,
(06:23):
and if you remember, your defense was your sister kept
cutting you off, and if you didn't talk really fast,
you couldn't get it out. In our family, you had
four people that were very, very smart, and all had opinions.
I mean, you certainly have an opinion. I have an opinion,
Kathy and Mom had an opinion, and if you didn't
get it out quickly, you weren't going to have the opportunity.
(06:44):
And I've tried to slow down my speech. I'm still
a little too fast, and I think part of that
is probably an underlying need to feel like you did.
I get everything out rapidly, and I need to. I'm
really focusing on trying to slow down and think more
about my words and also allow people to them as well.
It's hard to talk slowly at the risk of embarrassing you.
I am going to bring up one example from your
(07:06):
early childhood of your willfulness. When I was a graduate student,
or too late, but I think you were probably two
and a half in a moment of idiocy considering them
any money as a graduate student, and your mother was
putting up with a lot. We decided we would go
to the Concha Train Room, one of the best hotels
(07:29):
in town, which was very famous, serving mile High pie
as a dessert, had very elegant sort of French food
in the New Orleans tradition. And we got there and
sat down, and you suddenly, somehow intuited that they would
not tolerate you making a scene, and therefore there was
(07:50):
a very high value in paying you off. And you
suddenly decided you wanted butter, not crackers, butter, and you
would put butter on the cracker and look it off,
and then put more butter on the cracker. And every
time we tried to convince you to quit doing it,
you'd make just enough noise for the maitre d to
start drifting our way, and we'd give you more Butter.
(08:10):
I always thought it was an example that down deep
underneath all your pleasantness, there's an enormous willpower. I've got
to say it. Luckily I don't remember that I think
is good. But knowing my love for Butter, I absolutely
believe that story. I have no doubt about it. And
the fact that you could take a small child into
a very nice restaurant, I think it's fascinating. Yeah, I
(08:32):
did have a certain lack of I think common sense. Well,
you probably thought you could take a book with me
or something, or let me look at pictures. But to
your point, if there's better nearby and my bed is
knowing that restaurant, it was very good butter, there's probably
French Normandy butter. It was very creamy, and I'm sure
I enjoyed probably a pound or two. Well, you know,
I wouldn't want to take you out to have cheap butter,
(08:53):
even at that age. Next, Jackie talks about what it
was like to grow up as my and I reveal
a few stories about her childhood as well. I remember
(09:19):
being very surprised when you told me years ago that
the very first time I lost, you had somebody at
your school tell you how glad they were that I
had lost. And you were pretty young at that point.
It's kind of like, here you are the morning after
and this person's telling you how happy she is that
you're miserable. Yeah, that did happen. And you know, it's
interesting because now, I mean, decades later, people when they
(09:42):
hear that you're my father, First of all, they often
don't believe me. I try to ask why I would
make that up, and then I tell them, you know,
look just like you if you look at my eyes,
which I do, and then they always think, oh, well,
he was speaker of the house and it was always wonderful,
and it was always and I'm like, wait, it is wonderful.
But there was a long period when I was young
where as you know, you ran you twice and lost
(10:03):
and finally one the third time. But you know, now,
I'm kind of used to people being negative about certain things,
but when you're very young to have someone at the
school to come up to you the next morning and say, gosh,
I'm glad your dad lost. Quite frankly, it left me
speechless because I don't know what one would say to that.
But it also makes me realize how personally people take
things and half forever, and how they're focused on themselves
(10:27):
versus other people. It was just an odd experience because
that was a very quiet child growing up, and to
have an a minister to come up and tell me
that was quite frankly, Obviously, decades later, I'm still talking
about it was quite wounding. I'm often struck that how
kind of unique your life has been, just in the
sense that very early on you got swept up in
all this political stuff and the whole process of what
(10:51):
was really a very long odyssey from the time I
first started running till we finally won control ninety four.
I'm curious, on the standpoint of other people, as you
think about it, what are the kind of lessons or
experiences to stand out in your mind from that long
process and a really remarkable involvement in public life. People
always talk about the sixth District like it's some right
(11:12):
next to Atlanta. The sixth District when you ran in
the seventies was a very rural district south Atlanta, west
to Alabama and down to Griffin it was a big,
huge district. Obviously, no social media, no internet, any real
TV at that time, so you weren't able to use TV.
So we went out and we did hand to hand combats.
So I like to think about We go to shopping centers,
(11:34):
we go to gas stations that may have only two
people there. But you figured out that if you let
your daughters, who were very young and relatively cute, go
up and ask people to hand the reverse sure or
to put on the bumper sticker, it was much more
likely to happen. You figured out how to be successful
at that. But we had a lot of fun. You know,
(11:56):
we would be out on weekends. Fourth of julys were
a fourteen sixteen hour day. But that was just my
our lives growing up. When you look back on that,
was that a growth experience or was that the most
of my MoMA's youth? Really well, now, I mean I
think you know, I was really I mean I was
really young, and so you know, at that age, quite frankly,
(12:16):
I enjoyed going out with you, in campaigning with you,
and then at some point we invited our friends along
to go with us before we stopped going at all.
But to me, it was always interesting. You always learned something.
I normally had a book with me in case you
had to go into meetings with other people in the
campaign staff. I had something to do. I slept in
the back of the car sometimes. And I'm sure you
remember at one point we actually had a NEWT for
(12:39):
Congress from the top of our car, which was a
little It was a huge plowood sign with a campaign
slogan put across it, and we would be all over
the distrect with that NEWT for Congress sign it with
my life. So it's hard. It's hard for me because
people often say, what's the light being new Gingwhich's daughter?
And quite frankly, the only answer I can say is
(13:01):
that's all I've ever been. You know, I grew up
in this environment. I grew up in politics, and in
some ways I can't imagine life about it. I really
thought it was super important that people to understand that
you're a great dad. You've been there for Kathy and I.
I mean I remember when you were a speaker. I
would call in and you stop and talk to me.
We always made sure that you had time for us,
and to me, that's always been really important. Next Jackie
(13:25):
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(14:08):
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visiting Oxford Goldgroup dot com slash newts World. Financial security
is just a phone call away. I think the thing
that I most liked about the way you wrote your
new book, Are Broken America, is that you weave together
(16:00):
sort of personal life with the bigger issues so you
don't get sucked up into some rarefied environment that has
no relationship to how life has actually lived. What led
you to write this particular book. I've watched my friends,
i watched our family. I watched our community basically either
ignore a lot of discussions about politics because they don't
(16:21):
want to get involved because it's so polarizing and so personal.
Or I've watched people say things they're through polarizing and
judge people so personally that I really thought, this is
not the way. This is not the way we reach solutions.
I mean, it's not the way you reach solutions in families,
it's not the way you each solutions in communities. It's
(16:42):
certainly not the way you each solutions as a country.
And you know, back to your point about kind of
weaving everything together, that's really what life's about. How do
we take disparate parts of our lives and weave them
together in a way that makes sense. And that's really
what's driving me to write this book. I really feel
that we're at a really important part in our country
where we have to stop focusing on grievances and really
(17:05):
focus on gratitude. I mean, we are so blessed to
live in this country, and when we change our perspective
and look at it from the perspective of gratitude, and
we think about how can we work together to create
real solutions. I think we can make real progress, but
it can't be done at the national level. It has
to be done in the community. Was there a moment
(17:26):
when suddenly it hits you that this was a message
you really wanted to spend time on, both for yourself
and for your country. Well, it really happened. I think
over the last two years, watching all of the media
has gotten so frothy. It's not news anymore. It's just
the latest thing they can talk about. I don't watch
news anymore because it's so outlandish and so to me,
(17:47):
it's really important to me. My children are. I've got
one that's gonna be a sophomore in college, i have
one that's a senior in high school, and I'm quite
frankly concerned about what their future looks like. And on
the opposite side, I have this incredible gratefulness for being
involved with my community. As you know, my husband, Jimmy
and his family have been deeply involved for generations, and
(18:08):
so Jimmy and I are also very deeply committed and involved,
and I've gotten such reward from being involved in the community,
have also seen the results that's had. And so if
you put those two things together, how are you concerned
about national politics and the current ranting and raving, and
then how great it is to be involved in the
progress that can be made. To me, it was really
(18:28):
important to really write about how can we do better
as a nation, And we don't do better as a
nation by blaming each other and by sharing our grievances.
How we do better as a nation is really working
together and making progress. And it's really hard because to
do that you have to kind of set aside your
preconceived notions about other people and to really focus on
(18:51):
one issue and to make progress there. It's really worth it,
and that's the only way you actually move forward. Join
a book that is as important as thoughtful as Our
Broken America is a real project. How did you find
the time and how did you discipline yourself to do that?
You're right, it is a real project. When people buy
the book and read it, they'll notice that I have
(19:14):
pages and pages and pages and pages of footnotes because
I did a ton of research for this book. It
was very important for me that not that ja I
wrote about it, but that I actually had information and
statistics and other people's ideas and trying to synthesize kind
of what's out there currently. So with a lot of research.
I did a lot of it early in the morning
(19:34):
or late at night, or I don't know if you've
had this experience when I wake up at two o'clock
in the morning for two hours. I might write then,
but you just have to sit down and do it.
This is the first time that I put together a
full length book, and quite frankly, it was a huge challenge,
and there were quite a few times in there where
I was a little concerned about a where it was
going and be where it would end up. I can
(19:55):
tell you that it wouldn't have been possible without my
sister Kathy, who was a constant cheerleader for me, and
without Tom Watkins, who helped edit my work. It just
did an incredible job, and of course Kate it's interstrate.
Kate hearts and did a great job. It's a long process,
and I've got to say I'm actually quite happy with
how it turned out, which you never know when you
start a project how it's going to end up. You'll
(20:16):
have the knack of taking psychological information in psychological insights
and then applying to our national political dialogue in a
sense kind of treating the country like a giant person
and weaving together things that are totally outside of the
kind of traditional think tank segmentation. So as opposed to
(20:38):
a series of verticals, you somehow are able to horizontally
reach across and pick up insights and ideas from a
wide range of sources. How do you find all these sources?
I'm a voracist reader. I love to learn, so you know,
I mean I have an MBA and finance to have
a CFA. I worked in financial operations involved with four
(20:58):
Difference nonprofit in Atlanta are rite columns. So to your point,
I have a lot. It's a very broad area, and
I'm very interested in all sorts of things anythink from.
I actually quote from a CFA website in the book
to looking at statistics about child development. Since I have
kids and really my first role as wife and mother,
(21:19):
I spent a lot of time doing that. I spent
a lot of time thinking about that. I spent a
lot of time with my children and my husband trying
to think about how can we be a better family.
And I think all those things make me very curious
and to your point about you know, looking at our
nation as a big like it's this big family or
this big you know, personal dynamic. If we really if
(21:40):
you think about it, you know, we're really careful our
most parents are really careful about how we talk to children,
because we all know that if you tell a children,
or even if you're a teacher, if you tell a
child all the time they're terrible, it's very lovely that
child will end up that way. And so we think
very careful about how we frame things, about how we
talk about children, about talking about the future is bright,
(22:01):
if they work hard, they'll do well, etc. Etc. But
think about how we talk about our nation right now,
And that's really kind of what's driving this vision for
this book. If we're so we hear so many negative
things about our nation today, and that's quite frankly a
challenge for us, and I think we really need to
change our national dialogue. Yes we have problems. I'm not
saying we don't have problems, but we really need to
(22:23):
focus on the things that are so exceptional about our nation,
how grateful we are, and then figure out from there,
from a strength of positivity and optimism and belief in
the future. From there we can make real progress. But
if we're constantly beating ourselves up as a nation, it's
no wonder that we don't make much progress. So in
(22:45):
a sense, you try to heal the country the same
way as if you were apparent. The way we move
forward best in America if we have a leader or
someone that can inspire us to be better, to do better,
to reach out, and that's what we need today. We
don't need leaders that talk about how horrible we are.
I mean, that makes it all want to go in
our closets and not come out. We need people that
(23:07):
they talk about how great we are and about together
what progress we can make. That's where our country really
is the best and does the best. And that's why
I'm really reaching for in this book. Well, listen, I'm
really proud of your new book, Are Broken America. Why
both sides need to stop ranting and start listening. And
I want to tell everybody that it's available for preorder now.
(23:34):
Thank you to my guest Jackie Gingrich Cushman. You can
read the next sertive of her new book, Are Broken
America why both sides need to stop ranting and start
listening by visiting our show page at newtsworld dot com.
News World is produced by Westwood One. Our executive producers
Debbie Myers, and our producer is Garnsey Slow. Our editor
(23:56):
is Robert Browski, and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. Our
guest booker is Grace Davis. The artwork for the show
was created by Steve Penley. The music was composed by
Joey Salvia. Special thanks to the team at King sixty
and Westwood Ones, John Wardock and Robert Batters. Please email
(24:18):
me with your comments at newt at newtsworld dot com.
If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to
Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and
give us a review so others can learn what it's
all about. On the next episode of Newtsworld, we are
(24:42):
fighting a new war with an invisible front line and
an indiscernible enemy. This is America's secret cyber war, and
we've been fighting it since the dawn of the Internet.
My guest Chris Gore. If you are a corporate executive,
there's an entire friend of this whale fishing where people
will go in and grab your information. It's a whole
scam that's been going around for a couple of years.
(25:04):
Targeting often happens at home, so if they can go
after your Gmail or your home route, or they're going
to do that, I'm new Gingrich. This is Newsworld, the
Westwood one podcast network.
Hi, This is newt Twenty twenty is going to be
one of the most extraordinary election years of our lifetime.
I want to invite you to join my Inner Circle
as we discuss each twist and turn in the presidential race.
In my members only Inner Circle Club, you'll receive special
flash briefings, online events, and members only audio reports from
(00:21):
me and my team. Here is a special offer for
my podcast listeners. Join my Inner Circle today at Newtcentercircle
dot com slash podcast, and if you sign up for
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Circle dot com slash podcast use the Code podcast at checkout.
Sign up today at Newtcenter Circle dot com slash podcast
and use the Code podcast Hurry this Offtway Spires, February fourteenth.
(01:05):
On this episode of News World, I really feel delighted,
both professionally and personally to have this chance to introduce
to you my daughter, Jackie Ingrish Cushman. She's now written
her third book, which I think is a really really
important book, called Our Broken America. Why both sides Need
(01:25):
to stop ranting and start listening, and I think there's
a lot of wisdom in it. I'm so proud of
how she has grown as a mother, raising our two grandchildren,
and the process of both a professional and working and
as a local citizen. So for me, it's both an
honor but in a very very distinct pleasure to welcome
(01:46):
her as my guest. Jackie, I am thrilled that you
were here. Well, thank you so much, Dad, I really
appreciate it. It's kind of fun actually to be here
(02:06):
with you in person. I'm very excited because I think
you have a pretty big deal coming out in September.
I'm so excited about my new book, Are Broken America.
While both sides need to stop ranting and start listening. Now,
as you know, part of my career was made of ranting,
so I had to read the book and sort of
learn some new lessons. But tell me this, you've really
(02:28):
put together, I think, a very profound book about how
to actually get us out of the emotional gridlock we're in.
How did you come to the understanding? Well, a couple
of things. One, I have two children that are now
once in college and in high school, and watching them
grow up in the last two decades, and then watching
our political environment, and then pulling those two items together
(02:50):
in terms of how do you deal with a lot
of conflicts, how do you work in ways in which
you can look forward to be optimistic. That's really what
drove me to write this book, Broken America. We need
to work together as the country, and to do that,
we have to change how we're thinking and interacting with
each other. Part of what you put in here, which
I was very touched by, is what it was like
(03:10):
to grow up as my daughter and to be in
politics almost for the time you were born. What was
that like To sit down and turn and write that
out and recounted for other people, It was hard, quite frankly.
I mean it's people have asked me, what's it like
to be nuking with his daughter? And my response is
always that's who I am, So I don't know any
(03:30):
other reality. That's who I am as a person. But
people have so many preconceived notions of what that means.
And really it was a very basic childhood. We lived
in a small town, We went to church a lot,
we went to high school football games, and then we
campaigned a lot. But to me, it's really important to
understand that some of must of what we did as
a family was about learning and working hard well and
(03:51):
back recently, I was looking at some pictures when you
were like it swere or four years old, of you
and your sister, and it's really kind of hard to
imagine that that little grew up into you. To know
you today, where you're so outgoing, so confident, it's almost
impossible to imagine how basically shy you were. I was
the child that sat in a classroom at school and
(04:12):
read a book during class. Then I read a book
during lunch. But then again, we were the family that
we would sit around and all four of us would read.
I mean, that's what we did as our hobby. And
quite frankly, I still read a lot today. It's part
of what shaped who I am and how I think.
So I think that reading is incredibly important. I remember
(04:34):
watching your daughter, Maggie. I think she was about nine
at that point, and we were off somewhere and she
brought like five books with her, and you know her
and I still I have to confess, and I'm still
the same way. Both of my children take books wherever
they go. They're both voracious readers like Yell did. Was
Kathy and I. Our children started reading very early. We
(04:55):
read to them for ages until they could read. And
I remember one night Robert was very and I was
reading to him, and I think he was pretending to read,
or maybe he was reading a little bit, but at
some point he goes, Mommy, I don't really like to read.
I just do it to make you happy. And I said, well, honey,
do they keep doing it? Because Matthew doesn't love to
read and reading is one of the best ways to learn.
(05:16):
Your sister, who's just a couple of years older than you,
I've sort of provided a shadow. You could let her
be the more aggressive, which is people knowing the two
of you now would never believe that you let her
take the lead so much, because I think you've grown
into a neighbor friend, civic worker, intellectual, professional businesswoman if
(05:37):
they'd seen you back then. And you really see it
in some of those very early pictures, So the younger
daughter walking around near your big sister. That funny thing
is when we were younger, we looked so much alike
the macimber. One time Mom should be a picture. She's like, oh, look,
you're so cute, and I look in the back of
my mom, I wasn't even born yet, that's Kathy. So
we did look so much alike. And at one point,
(05:59):
I think around maybe high school or maybe early college.
We try to pass for twins occasionally, but that was
part of the you know, kind of what shaped me.
And quite frankly, you know, if push comes to shove,
I'm still very happy to let Kathy take the lead.
She's an incredible sister, very smart, very hard working. Quite frankly,
without her help, this book would not have gotten written.
You used to talk much faster than you do now,
(06:23):
and if you remember, your defense was your sister kept
cutting you off, and if you didn't talk really fast,
you couldn't get it out. In our family, you had
four people that were very, very smart, and all had opinions.
I mean, you certainly have an opinion. I have an opinion,
Kathy and Mom had an opinion, and if you didn't
get it out quickly, you weren't going to have the opportunity.
(06:44):
And I've tried to slow down my speech. I'm still
a little too fast, and I think part of that
is probably an underlying need to feel like you did.
I get everything out rapidly, and I need to. I'm
really focusing on trying to slow down and think more
about my words and also allow people to them as well.
It's hard to talk slowly at the risk of embarrassing you.
I am going to bring up one example from your
(07:06):
early childhood of your willfulness. When I was a graduate student,
or too late, but I think you were probably two
and a half in a moment of idiocy considering them
any money as a graduate student, and your mother was
putting up with a lot. We decided we would go
to the Concha Train Room, one of the best hotels
(07:29):
in town, which was very famous, serving mile High pie
as a dessert, had very elegant sort of French food
in the New Orleans tradition. And we got there and
sat down, and you suddenly, somehow intuited that they would
not tolerate you making a scene, and therefore there was
(07:50):
a very high value in paying you off. And you
suddenly decided you wanted butter, not crackers, butter, and you
would put butter on the cracker and look it off,
and then put more butter on the cracker. And every
time we tried to convince you to quit doing it,
you'd make just enough noise for the maitre d to
start drifting our way, and we'd give you more Butter.
(08:10):
I always thought it was an example that down deep
underneath all your pleasantness, there's an enormous willpower. I've got
to say it. Luckily I don't remember that I think
is good. But knowing my love for Butter, I absolutely
believe that story. I have no doubt about it. And
the fact that you could take a small child into
a very nice restaurant, I think it's fascinating. Yeah, I
(08:32):
did have a certain lack of I think common sense. Well,
you probably thought you could take a book with me
or something, or let me look at pictures. But to
your point, if there's better nearby and my bed is
knowing that restaurant, it was very good butter, there's probably
French Normandy butter. It was very creamy, and I'm sure
I enjoyed probably a pound or two. Well, you know,
I wouldn't want to take you out to have cheap butter,
(08:53):
even at that age. Next, Jackie talks about what it
was like to grow up as my and I reveal
a few stories about her childhood as well. I remember
(09:19):
being very surprised when you told me years ago that
the very first time I lost, you had somebody at
your school tell you how glad they were that I
had lost. And you were pretty young at that point.
It's kind of like, here you are the morning after
and this person's telling you how happy she is that
you're miserable. Yeah, that did happen. And you know, it's
interesting because now, I mean, decades later, people when they
(09:42):
hear that you're my father, First of all, they often
don't believe me. I try to ask why I would
make that up, and then I tell them, you know,
look just like you if you look at my eyes,
which I do, and then they always think, oh, well,
he was speaker of the house and it was always wonderful,
and it was always and I'm like, wait, it is wonderful.
But there was a long period when I was young
where as you know, you ran you twice and lost
(10:03):
and finally one the third time. But you know, now,
I'm kind of used to people being negative about certain things,
but when you're very young to have someone at the
school to come up to you the next morning and say, gosh,
I'm glad your dad lost. Quite frankly, it left me
speechless because I don't know what one would say to that.
But it also makes me realize how personally people take
things and half forever, and how they're focused on themselves
(10:27):
versus other people. It was just an odd experience because
that was a very quiet child growing up, and to
have an a minister to come up and tell me
that was quite frankly, Obviously, decades later, I'm still talking
about it was quite wounding. I'm often struck that how
kind of unique your life has been, just in the
sense that very early on you got swept up in
all this political stuff and the whole process of what
(10:51):
was really a very long odyssey from the time I
first started running till we finally won control ninety four.
I'm curious, on the standpoint of other people, as you
think about it, what are the kind of lessons or
experiences to stand out in your mind from that long
process and a really remarkable involvement in public life. People
always talk about the sixth District like it's some right
(11:12):
next to Atlanta. The sixth District when you ran in
the seventies was a very rural district south Atlanta, west
to Alabama and down to Griffin it was a big,
huge district. Obviously, no social media, no internet, any real
TV at that time, so you weren't able to use TV.
So we went out and we did hand to hand combats.
So I like to think about We go to shopping centers,
(11:34):
we go to gas stations that may have only two
people there. But you figured out that if you let
your daughters, who were very young and relatively cute, go
up and ask people to hand the reverse sure or
to put on the bumper sticker, it was much more
likely to happen. You figured out how to be successful
at that. But we had a lot of fun. You know,
(11:56):
we would be out on weekends. Fourth of julys were
a fourteen sixteen hour day. But that was just my
our lives growing up. When you look back on that,
was that a growth experience or was that the most
of my MoMA's youth? Really well, now, I mean I
think you know, I was really I mean I was
really young, and so you know, at that age, quite frankly,
(12:16):
I enjoyed going out with you, in campaigning with you,
and then at some point we invited our friends along
to go with us before we stopped going at all.
But to me, it was always interesting. You always learned something.
I normally had a book with me in case you
had to go into meetings with other people in the
campaign staff. I had something to do. I slept in
the back of the car sometimes. And I'm sure you
remember at one point we actually had a NEWT for
(12:39):
Congress from the top of our car, which was a
little It was a huge plowood sign with a campaign
slogan put across it, and we would be all over
the distrect with that NEWT for Congress sign it with
my life. So it's hard. It's hard for me because
people often say, what's the light being new Gingwhich's daughter?
And quite frankly, the only answer I can say is
(13:01):
that's all I've ever been. You know, I grew up
in this environment. I grew up in politics, and in
some ways I can't imagine life about it. I really
thought it was super important that people to understand that
you're a great dad. You've been there for Kathy and I.
I mean I remember when you were a speaker. I
would call in and you stop and talk to me.
We always made sure that you had time for us,
and to me, that's always been really important. Next Jackie
(13:25):
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(13:47):
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(14:08):
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(14:29):
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(14:50):
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visiting Oxford Goldgroup dot com slash newts World. Financial security
is just a phone call away. I think the thing
that I most liked about the way you wrote your
new book, Are Broken America, is that you weave together
(16:00):
sort of personal life with the bigger issues so you
don't get sucked up into some rarefied environment that has
no relationship to how life has actually lived. What led
you to write this particular book. I've watched my friends,
i watched our family. I watched our community basically either
ignore a lot of discussions about politics because they don't
(16:21):
want to get involved because it's so polarizing and so personal.
Or I've watched people say things they're through polarizing and
judge people so personally that I really thought, this is
not the way. This is not the way we reach solutions.
I mean, it's not the way you reach solutions in families,
it's not the way you each solutions in communities. It's
(16:42):
certainly not the way you each solutions as a country.
And you know, back to your point about kind of
weaving everything together, that's really what life's about. How do
we take disparate parts of our lives and weave them
together in a way that makes sense. And that's really
what's driving me to write this book. I really feel
that we're at a really important part in our country
where we have to stop focusing on grievances and really
(17:05):
focus on gratitude. I mean, we are so blessed to
live in this country, and when we change our perspective
and look at it from the perspective of gratitude, and
we think about how can we work together to create
real solutions. I think we can make real progress, but
it can't be done at the national level. It has
to be done in the community. Was there a moment
(17:26):
when suddenly it hits you that this was a message
you really wanted to spend time on, both for yourself
and for your country. Well, it really happened. I think
over the last two years, watching all of the media
has gotten so frothy. It's not news anymore. It's just
the latest thing they can talk about. I don't watch
news anymore because it's so outlandish and so to me,
(17:47):
it's really important to me. My children are. I've got
one that's gonna be a sophomore in college, i have
one that's a senior in high school, and I'm quite
frankly concerned about what their future looks like. And on
the opposite side, I have this incredible gratefulness for being
involved with my community. As you know, my husband, Jimmy
and his family have been deeply involved for generations, and
(18:08):
so Jimmy and I are also very deeply committed and involved,
and I've gotten such reward from being involved in the community,
have also seen the results that's had. And so if
you put those two things together, how are you concerned
about national politics and the current ranting and raving, and
then how great it is to be involved in the
progress that can be made. To me, it was really
(18:28):
important to really write about how can we do better
as a nation, And we don't do better as a
nation by blaming each other and by sharing our grievances.
How we do better as a nation is really working
together and making progress. And it's really hard because to
do that you have to kind of set aside your
preconceived notions about other people and to really focus on
(18:51):
one issue and to make progress there. It's really worth it,
and that's the only way you actually move forward. Join
a book that is as important as thoughtful as Our
Broken America is a real project. How did you find
the time and how did you discipline yourself to do that?
You're right, it is a real project. When people buy
the book and read it, they'll notice that I have
(19:14):
pages and pages and pages and pages of footnotes because
I did a ton of research for this book. It
was very important for me that not that ja I
wrote about it, but that I actually had information and
statistics and other people's ideas and trying to synthesize kind
of what's out there currently. So with a lot of research.
I did a lot of it early in the morning
(19:34):
or late at night, or I don't know if you've
had this experience when I wake up at two o'clock
in the morning for two hours. I might write then,
but you just have to sit down and do it.
This is the first time that I put together a
full length book, and quite frankly, it was a huge challenge,
and there were quite a few times in there where
I was a little concerned about a where it was
going and be where it would end up. I can
(19:55):
tell you that it wouldn't have been possible without my
sister Kathy, who was a constant cheerleader for me, and
without Tom Watkins, who helped edit my work. It just
did an incredible job, and of course Kate it's interstrate.
Kate hearts and did a great job. It's a long process,
and I've got to say I'm actually quite happy with
how it turned out, which you never know when you
start a project how it's going to end up. You'll
(20:16):
have the knack of taking psychological information in psychological insights
and then applying to our national political dialogue in a
sense kind of treating the country like a giant person
and weaving together things that are totally outside of the
kind of traditional think tank segmentation. So as opposed to
(20:38):
a series of verticals, you somehow are able to horizontally
reach across and pick up insights and ideas from a
wide range of sources. How do you find all these sources?
I'm a voracist reader. I love to learn, so you know,
I mean I have an MBA and finance to have
a CFA. I worked in financial operations involved with four
(20:58):
Difference nonprofit in Atlanta are rite columns. So to your point,
I have a lot. It's a very broad area, and
I'm very interested in all sorts of things anythink from.
I actually quote from a CFA website in the book
to looking at statistics about child development. Since I have
kids and really my first role as wife and mother,
(21:19):
I spent a lot of time doing that. I spent
a lot of time thinking about that. I spent a
lot of time with my children and my husband trying
to think about how can we be a better family.
And I think all those things make me very curious
and to your point about you know, looking at our
nation as a big like it's this big family or
this big you know, personal dynamic. If we really if
(21:40):
you think about it, you know, we're really careful our
most parents are really careful about how we talk to children,
because we all know that if you tell a children,
or even if you're a teacher, if you tell a
child all the time they're terrible, it's very lovely that
child will end up that way. And so we think
very careful about how we frame things, about how we
talk about children, about talking about the future is bright,
(22:01):
if they work hard, they'll do well, etc. Etc. But
think about how we talk about our nation right now,
And that's really kind of what's driving this vision for
this book. If we're so we hear so many negative
things about our nation today, and that's quite frankly a
challenge for us, and I think we really need to
change our national dialogue. Yes we have problems. I'm not
saying we don't have problems, but we really need to
(22:23):
focus on the things that are so exceptional about our nation,
how grateful we are, and then figure out from there,
from a strength of positivity and optimism and belief in
the future. From there we can make real progress. But
if we're constantly beating ourselves up as a nation, it's
no wonder that we don't make much progress. So in
(22:45):
a sense, you try to heal the country the same
way as if you were apparent. The way we move
forward best in America if we have a leader or
someone that can inspire us to be better, to do better,
to reach out, and that's what we need today. We
don't need leaders that talk about how horrible we are.
I mean, that makes it all want to go in
our closets and not come out. We need people that
(23:07):
they talk about how great we are and about together
what progress we can make. That's where our country really
is the best and does the best. And that's why
I'm really reaching for in this book. Well, listen, I'm
really proud of your new book, Are Broken America. Why
both sides need to stop ranting and start listening. And
I want to tell everybody that it's available for preorder now.
(23:34):
Thank you to my guest Jackie Gingrich Cushman. You can
read the next sertive of her new book, Are Broken
America why both sides need to stop ranting and start
listening by visiting our show page at newtsworld dot com.
News World is produced by Westwood One. Our executive producers
Debbie Myers, and our producer is Garnsey Slow. Our editor
(23:56):
is Robert Browski, and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. Our
guest booker is Grace Davis. The artwork for the show
was created by Steve Penley. The music was composed by
Joey Salvia. Special thanks to the team at King sixty
and Westwood Ones, John Wardock and Robert Batters. Please email
(24:18):
me with your comments at newt at newtsworld dot com.
If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to
Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and
give us a review so others can learn what it's
all about. On the next episode of Newtsworld, we are
(24:42):
fighting a new war with an invisible front line and
an indiscernible enemy. This is America's secret cyber war, and
we've been fighting it since the dawn of the Internet.
My guest Chris Gore. If you are a corporate executive,
there's an entire friend of this whale fishing where people
will go in and grab your information. It's a whole
scam that's been going around for a couple of years.
(25:04):
Targeting often happens at home, so if they can go
after your Gmail or your home route, or they're going
to do that, I'm new Gingrich. This is Newsworld, the
Westwood one podcast network.
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