Saul Alinsky had no use for bullies like Newt Gingrich, the author writes. Gingrich is no Saul Alinsky

If Saul Alinsky weren’t already dead, he’d die to get a piece of Newt Gingrich. The one kind of man Alinsky had no use for was a bully.

The Dough Boy of GOP reaction has apparently decided he can win it all by making Alinsky the central figure of the 2012 campaign. Every time Gingrich opens his mouth, out comes pronunciamenti like “the centerpiece of this campaign…is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky.” (Fox Nation 1/21/12) or “Saul Alinsky radicalism is at the heart of Obama.” (CNN 1/22/12)


If this were not silly enough, harken to Rudy Giuliani on the TV upbraiding Gingrich for acting like Alinsky: “What the hell are you doing, Newt? I expect this from Saul Alinsky. This is what Saul Alinsky taught Barack Obama.”

Since President Barack Obama was 11 years old when Alinsky died, what, if anything, he learned from Alinsky, the inventor of community organizing, is not known. Given some moves the president has made in office, it’s not immediately apparent that Alinsky’s political genius rubbed off on him.

Were he around today, Alinsky, the old street fighter who died in 1972, would be delighted with all this. He was at his best when the empty suits and stuffed shirts trained their guns on him. I say that having known Alinsky for almost 20 years, worked for him for 10 of them and watched him in action countless times.

On a debate stage he would take the former speaker with ease because you could not bully Alinsky into the embarrassed mumbling to which Gingrich’s GOP rivals have been reduced. It would be no contest — for Alinsky was a witty man who could have easily ridiculed Mr. Roly-Poly’s claims of being the all-knowing historian.

Alinsky called himself a radical not because he was a devotee of an economic or political doctrine. He didn’t use the abstract terms that Gingrich uses, like capitalism, free market or socialism. Radical to Alinsky meant tough, smart, practical, persevering, fearless.

He contrasted that to the non-radicals, the softies, the pushovers, the liberals and the conservatives. None of whom you could count on in a knife fight.

To be a radical, Alinsky believed you had to have it together. Character counted. He wanted people who put the work of organizing before their own schemes and self-interest.

He was not one to judge people’s adulteries. But if you had set yourself to serving something larger and more important than yourself, Alinsky believed you could not indulge your appetites and lusty yearnings at the expense of the work.

He used to tell his organizers that he didn’t care if they got laid by someone they weren’t married to — as long as it was a few hundred miles away from where they were organizing. Scandal disrupted the work.

As with sex, so with money. In contrast to Gingrich, whose avarice has left a stain over his career in the House and then after, Alinsky was remorseless in overseeing how money entrusted to him was spent and from whom he accepted funds.

Having had to deal with organizers gone bad, gangsters, corrupt civic figures and crooked politicians, Alinsky could catch the scent given off by weak people, men without self-control, men ruled by their passions for pride, place, booze, money, food, sex and adulation.

Alinsky would have nailed the grim fat man a hundred yards away.

In Congress, Gingrich made a name of sorts for himself the time he groused about being asked to deplane from Air Force One’s rear door. He wanted to come down the front steps, where the Marine guard throws you a salute and people on the wrong side of the velvet rope strain for so much as a smile. Gingrich likes to run with the overdogs, with the megas — the mega rich, the mega powerful, the mega glorious.

Alinsky spent his life with the have-nots and the have-not-enoughs. He hated to see people kicked around, but he didn’t entertain Captain America fantasies. He didn’t want to wear a cape. Instead, by organizing people, he wanted to insure that every man and woman could have their own cape.

Nicholas von Hoffman’s most recent book is “Radical, A Portrait of Saul Alinsky.”