AMERICA/ Conor O'Clery:Newt Gingrich came back this week with a bang, or rather a controlled political explosion. The former House Speaker emerged from political disgrace to savagely attack Secretary of State Colin Powell in a speech in Washington on Tuesday.
"The last seven months have involved six months of diplomatic failure and one month of military success," Gingrich said. The State Department was "ineffective and incoherent", a "broken instrument of policy" compared to Donald Rumsfeld's Defence Department which had enjoyed "stunning" diplomatic and military successes. Powell's upcoming trip to terrorist- supporting Syria was "ludicrous". And the creation of the "Quartet" of the US, the UN, Russia and the EU to oversee Israeli-Palestinian peace talks was "a clear disaster for American diplomacy". Trans-
forming the State Department should be Bush's next mission, said Gingrich, in a clear call for regime change at Foggy Bottom.
Gingrich has been in political limbo since he fell from power in 1999 amid disclosures he had an affair with a staffer while leading the impeachment cry against Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky. But he is an old friend of Rumsfeld who apparently knew about the broadside in advance, leading to speculation that Gingrich is a proxy in the warfare between the Secretaries of State and Defence.
In the early 1990s, when Rumsfeld was out of politics, Gingrich brought him in as a consultant. Rumsfeld has since repaid the favour, appointing Gingrich to his Defence Policy Board where he rubs shoulders with adviser Richard Perle, who also wants Powell neutered. Standing behind Gingrich is the increasingly assertive neo- conservative wing of the Republican Party, including Vice-President Dick Cheney, emboldened now by the swift victory in Iraq.
The nasty feud between Powell and Rumsfeld extends to most important foreign policy issues and has profound implications. At its heart is a debate over whether US interests are best served by building alliances and working through multinational co-operation, or by acting as it sees fit to secure security in a post-9/11 world.
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Gingrich's attack on Powell seems to have backfired, however. Powell associates pointed out that President Bush endorsed his UN diplomacy, the trip to Syria and the Middle East road map, and that it was Rumsfeld's team that had "lost" Turkey as Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz conducted pre-war negotiations.
The White House, annoyed that raw divisions were exposed, rallied to the defence of Powell, whom Ari Fleischer called an "able, able diplomat". Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, mocked the former speaker: "It's quite clear that Mr Gingrich is off his meds and out of therapy."
The State Department believes Gingrich had done Powell a huge favour by forcing Bush to rally behind him. Powell has been careful to act only with Bush's approval and he is winning some inter-agency skirmishes.
Rumsfeld circulated a memo proposing regime change rather than negotiations with North Korea but Powell got the President's backing for talks, and saw off a push by Rumsfeld to send a more conservative official, John Bolton, to lead the US side. Bush may also have noted that a new poll shows that the Secretary of State is the most popular official. He enjoys 85 per cent job approval, compared to Rumsfeld's 75 per cent and the President's 73 per cent.
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Another politician in hot water this week is Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. The number three in the Republican Party hierarchy criticised the idea that the Supreme Court could not rule against private homosexual acts.
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," he said. Critics said that Santorum was arguing for the right of government to police sexual morality in people's bedrooms, and not just homosexual acts but adultery. Democrats have called for him to resign his leadership post. Santorum, a devout Roman Catholic and anti-abortionist who was a close ally of Newt Gingrich, is unlikely nevertheless to suffer the fate of Trent Lott, the Senate leader forced out over pro-segregation remarks earlier this year. The "cannibals" aren't hungry enough this time, said his colleague Senator Arlen Specter.
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President Bush is coy about how much of the war he watched on TV but he apparently became a big fan of the ever-optimistic Iraqi Information Minister. "He's my man, he was great," he told NBC. "Somebody accused us of hiring him and putting him there. He was a classic." When he came on air aides rushed to tell the President. "Somebody would say, he's getting ready to speak, and I'd pop out of a meeting or turn and watch the TV," Bush said gleefully.
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More on the Dixie Chicks, the Texan country superstars whose lead singer, Natalie Maines, said before the war she was ashamed to come from the same state as George Bush. Sales of their hit CD Home plunged from 124,000 a week to 33,000 amid cries of "traitors" (which didn't bother the President who told NBC they "shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out, you know, freedom is a two-way street".) Now thanks to a semi-apology, support from Bruce Springsteen, and a splash, semi-naked, on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, the Chicks were No 1 last week on the Billboard country album charts.
It bears out the old adage: there's no such thing as bad publicity, as Monica Lewinsky can testify. The most famous White House intern launched a reality dating TV show on Fox called Mr Personality, which features a single woman wooed by 20 masked men, with Ms Lewinsky by her side for support. It attracted 12 million viewers.