To Renew America.

Test your understanding of the Republican revolution. Newt Gingrich is: (a) an original thinker-politician, whose fear for America's sagging trajectory prompts him to offer fresh solutions that go beyond politics as usual; (b) a manipulative propagandist, whose benign facade masks a ruthless hunger for power that he'll use for God-knows-what if we don't stop him; or (c) a jargon-loving management consultant in disguise, whose bromides and futurist visions get loonier with each new one he spews.

If you said "all of the above," maybe you've already read To Renew America, in which the traits that make Gingrich both fascinating and scary are on neon display. Renew is a breezy screed that purports to explain the source of Gingrich's ambitions, his diagnosis of what ails us, and his inventory of cures. There's plenty to question or dismiss here. Yet for liberals, the only thing that should be as troubling as Newt's agenda is their own illiberal refusal to admit there might be a sincere or worthy thought in his head.

After an opening reflection on his formative years (where we're told, among other things, that at age 14 the future speaker consecrated his life to "understanding what it takes for a free people to survive and to helping my country and the cause of freedom"), the book speaks in successive chapters to "the six challenges" Gingrich sees facing the country. These are, in his words, "Reasserting and Renewing American Civilization"; "America and the Third Wave Revolution"; "Creating American Jobs in the World Market"; "Replacing the Welfare State with an Opportunity Society"; "Balancing the Budget and Saving Social Security and Medicare"; and "Decentralizing Power." There's little new here if you've heard his spiel before.

Gingrich also offers a mini-memoir of the Contract With America, from inception to execution in the new Congress's first 100 days. The last 100 pages of the book consist of 17 bite-sized chapters in which Gingrich offers short takes on subjects ranging from Rush Limbaugh to the flat tax.

As with most Gingrich utterances, the book is bursting with ideas--some sensible, some inflammatory, others daffy. Among the sensible: Gingrich wants prisoners to work and study in prison, not lift weights and channel surf. He'd expand the Earning by Learning program he helped pilot in Georgia, which gives poor kids a dollar for each book they read and has created scores of ghetto bibliophiles. He also points persuasively to the religious spirit at the heart of American tradition, quoting Ben Franklin's quiet appeal for divine aid when the Founders nearly faltered.

Then Gingrich's brain burps. He predicts that honeymoons in space will be the rage by 2020 and that bold new merchandising can renew America's status as a premiere shopping destination. If people like our clothing stores and boutiques, he says, then they'll love our heart, liver, lung, and kidney transplants. And so on.

Meanwhile, sophistries and disingenuous analyses abound. A cheerleading Gingrich claims high-tech medicine will be our savior, bringing better care at lower costs without anyone having to give up anything. Sounds nice, except technology (combined with our aging population) is largely to blame for rising health costs, meaning that we'll soon face anguished choices between limiting some care or going broke. No nasty tradeoffs like that for Newt. He says only market reforms and choice can improve our schools, failing to explain why such nations as Japan and Germany admirably educate their young with evil state monopolies. He peddles the old canard that liberals alone are big spenders, when GOP heretics from David Stockman to David Frum have shown their party's own complicity at the federal trough. And in a triumph of hypocrisy, to bolster his case for welfare reform, Gingrich offers a nostalgic discourse on how social reformers once knew that giving people help they don't deserve is destructive to the human spirit. If that's heartfelt, why does Gingrich ignore the billions in mortgage interest deductions and windfall health and pension entitlements now corrupting the souls of the undeserving rich?

Scratch the Speaker's solutions, and often there's nothing there. Gingrich's cry for "a series of commissions" on technology or to "rethink our entire approach" to economic growth exemplify the many empty calls to action that sprinkle his book. When he gets specific, the results can be shocking. Wrapping up his discussion of the budget, for example, Gingrich casually adds that a reasonable federal government would probably spend $1 trillion, about $850 billion less than Republicans today say we'll need after they've made all their cuts between now and 2002. Reporters (and the Clinton White House) may want to follow up on the Speaker's plan to cut another 45 percent off of federal spending at that point.

The book suffers from two maddening stylistic tics. Dickens was paid by the word; Rupert Murdoch must be paying Newt by the superfluous superlative. "Extraordinary," "remarkable," "amazing," "stunning," "astounding," and "unprecedented" describe everything that catches Gingrich's eye, from scientific discoveries to congressional elections. It doesn't stop there: They're usually the most remarkable (astounding, stunning) on "the planet," "the globe," on earth," or "in history." I started circling these words and quit by page 10, averaging a remarkable three per page, more than any book I'd read on the planet. Also, Gingrich's annoying habit of speaking in jargon-heavy lists (e.g., "five basic principles" of civilization, "eight steps" for improving life for the poor, "three essential reasons" for balancing the budget) fails to create the air of authority it's designed to.

But for all Gingrich's faults, Renew is a Rorschach test that reveals as much about some liberals as about what's wrong with the new Republican ascendancy. Let me state clearly: I oppose most of Gingrich's policies and think he's dangerous precisely because he's so effective. Such reviewers as Joan Didion and Michael Kinsley are right to catalogue Newt's many errors, hypocrisies, and deceits. But to read their reviews, you'd think Gingrich is such a fraud that, apart from a nod to his political skills, there's not one positive thing to say about him.

This isn't fair. Even those whose views we despise or who seem utterly cynical and powermad often have some motivations or ideas that are worthy. Treating them superficially as a political tactic doesn't help defeat them and usually misses the truth. On the budget, for example, while I deplore the GOP plan that cuts the most vulnerable to give to those already well off, I have to acknowledge that Gingrich & Company have done more to raise public and media awareness of the fiscal crisis ahead when the baby boom retires than, say, the President.

There are other positive points. Gingrich has a healthy outrage over self-interested bureaucracies that stifle reform, whether it's faculties fighting ways to make college cheaper, doctors and lawyers protecting their guilds, of CPAs who like the complex tax code just-the way it is. Gingrich also describes what appears to be a highly effective division of duties he's worked out with Majority Leader Dick Anney, in which the Speaker acts as chairman and CEO--the vision man--while Armey acts as chief operating officer. If the Republican steamroller keeps rolling, Gingrich's innovation may become a model for future House management. Acting as if your opponents have no virtues can also be hypocritical. Didion, for example, dismisses Gingrich's interest in history as little more than a veneer and useful only in showing how Gingrich will appropriate anything that's of practical use to accumulate power. Maybe. But if Mario Cuomo had written a book describing the things he'd read that influenced him, citing historian Gordon Wood and quality guru Edwards Deming among the eclectic sources he'd learned from, my guess is that Democrats would be in ecstasies of admiration. At last, we'd say, a leader who can think! Come to think of it, wasn't this part of what made Bill Clinton so attractive?