RIGHT OF CENTER: PRESS IS STILL BAFFLED ABOUT GINGRICH

The media's coverage of the new speaker of the House is further proof that the elites in the Washington press corps still don't get it.

They fail to understand that the Republican sweep in November wasn't about the personalities of power inside the Beltway that accompanied Democratic control of Congress for so many years. The election wasn't about power in Washington at all, except to the extent that power is to be returned to the states and the people.

Speaker Newt Gingrich is an excellent articulator of the conservative tenets of individual freedom and decentralized government that has been the rallying cry of the new GOP congressional majority. But he merely helped craft the Contract With America. Without Gingrich, the contract, and the potential for revolution it inheres, remain.

And yet the Washington press corps acts as if all those new legislators in Washington were elected on Newt's coattails.

That must be why members of the media are pursuing the ridiculous Gingrich book-deal story. Surely Washington journalists, many of whom have written their own books, understand how publishing works and that nothing Gingrich did is improper or uncommon.

There are several steps to be taken before a best-selling book progresses from the author's head to the bookstore shelf. Typically, the author writes a proposal for a book, which a literary agent examines and polishes. The agent takes the proposal to an auction, where, if it shows promise, the book garners bids from companies competing for the right to publish it.

In Gingrich's case, every major publishing company wanted the book when it was bid last summer. Thus the bids climbed, and HarperCollins offered Gingrich a $4.5 million advance if he chose them to publish the book. So where is the impropriety?

Critics seem to think Gingrich has a conflict of interest because he held a meeting Nov. 28 with Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch, who is seeking congressional support for a TV station ownership dispute before the Federal Communications Commission, happens to own HarperCollins.

Murdoch has said he was unaware of the book deal, and Gingrich said he didn't know Murdoch owned HarperCollins when they had the meeting. But even if Gingrich knew Murdoch owned HarperCollins, how is it a conflict of interest that they held a meeting in November?

Under different circumstances, there might be grounds for suspicion. Eyebrows ought to be raised, for example, if the speaker of the House proposes a book that generates little interest in the marketplace. Along comes a prominent publishing company whose owner is in a dispute with the FCC. The publisher not only offers to print the unwanted book, but also throws in a $4.5 million advance.

Clearly that didn't happen in Gingrich's case. His book proposal generated widespread interest last summer, when he was merely Congressman Gingrich of the minority GOP. The highest bidder could have been any of a number of publishing companies.

In the wake of the book-deal flap, Gingrich agreed to dump the advance and wait until royalties began pouring in from sales after publication. Apparently, the new speaker of the House decided this wasn't a hill to die on. I disagree.

After all, the liberal press won't stop there. They will continue to dig up insignificant bits of meaningless improprieties to which they can ask Gingrich: "What did you know, and when did you know it?"

By giving up the advance, Gingrich thwarts the free market at work. Publishers compete for writers by offering varying rates for royalties on book sales. It is conceivable that a marginal publisher trying to make a name for itself could offer someone like the speaker of the House 100 percent royalties for a forthcoming book. But if that company failed to properly produce and market the book, sales might fall short of what they would have been with a better publishing company.

That's why the best companies put their reputations on the line by offering advances, which convey to writers the publishers' confidence in their ability to sell what they think is a good product.

In the end, the controversy will have little effect. It will take more than personal attacks on the speaker of the House to impede the runaway steamroller of reform the American people mandated Nov. 8. Newt Gingrich is only steering the thing. Voters' disdain for Washington, and their resolute ambition to wilt this behemoth that government has become, is the fuel.

~Jay Eastlick is the news editor of the Southeast Missourian.