Treason by Newt Gingrich, Pete Earley

House
    Washington, D.C.
    D espite his stature, Chairman Thomas Stanton didn’t have a government issued, lightly armored Cadillac at his disposal, which was the vehicle the federal government provided its upper-rung Washington bureaucrats for their personal safety. Members of Congress realized that images of them being chauffeured around Washington at taxpayers’ expense in luxury cars wouldn’t sit well with their constituents. They had to come up with their own alternatives. Stanton had a staff member ferry him around town so he could make phone calls or read in his car’s rear seat.
    As his driver neared the first Secret Service barricade outside the White House, Stanton glanced outside at the neoclassical home of the nation’s president with a mixture of pride and envy. The pride came from knowing that the White House was the only private resident of a world leader that was open to public tours. It was the people’s house, not its occupants’. That appealed to his Lincolnesque view of a government “of the people, by the people and for the people” even though Stanton knew that Lincoln had not originated that phrase when he uttered those famous lines in his Gettysburg Address. In one of the earliest English translations of the Holy Bible, printed in 1384, John Wycliffe had declared that the bible was not the property of the church but “This Bible is for the government of the people, for the people and by the people.” It appeared that even presidents occasionally plagiarized.
    Stanton’s envy came from his disappointment in knowing he would never be president. He’d run for the nation’s highest office the same year Sally Allworth had entered the race. Although Stanton had been viewed as the sure winner of their party’s nomination—and should have been—he had found himself caught in an unexpected wave of anti-Washington voter sentiment that political consultant Decker Lake had helped foment for Allworth. This anger and the sense that the federal government had become ineffective and unresponsive crippled Stanton. Political historians would later compare it to the fervor that led to a farmer-frontier-worker political rebellion in 1828 against the Eastern establishment that had landed Andrew Jackson in the White House. Stanton had been painted as the ultimate Washington insider, a veteran legislator in a Congress that had disappointed voters for decades. In contrast, Sally Allworth had been the fresh-faced outsider. There was a Norman Rockwell purity to a woman who had never intended to seek office until her senator husband had collapsed dead. Reporters had cast her as a plain-speaking, earnest
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
newcomer and—with Decker Lake behind the scenes subtly directing—portrayed Stanton as a relic, another old white man who cut deals in a smoke-filled back room. By the time Allworth claimed her first primary win, Stanton didn’t need his half-glasses to read the writing on the wall. A party loyalist, Stanton had buried the hatchet and stumped for Allworth after she had secured their party’s nomination. He’d drafted much of her foreign policy platform, including her position on fighting terrorism. They’d worked well together, but neither had any genuine affection for the other. Respect was expected, friendship was not, nor was it particularly wanted.
    â€œThank you, Mr. Chairman, for coming to see me,” President Allworth proclaimed as soon as he entered the Oval Office. “Let’s have a private chat.” She nodded toward the two sofas in front of her desk near a rug embroidered with the Great Seal of the United States.
    As soon as they were seated, Allworth addressed him by his first name, “Thomas, the two of us have always been able to speak candidly, which I greatly appreciate, so let’s get right to it. I understand from my chief of staff that you intend to move forward with