He asks whether, as conservatives, "should we be comfortable with presiding over the bureaucracies, special interests, and spending of the liberal government we have inherited or must we insist on transforming that obsolete system into a new, more dynamic, and significantly different system of governing."

His arguments capture a sense of what other conservative thinkers have voiced less pointedly: Why is it that conservatives in office behave differently than conservatives campaigning?

One answer is that there is an inherent difference in perspective that comes from "taking office". Speaker Gingrich writes that "there is a difference between taking office and taking power." It is one thing for a conservative politician to "throw grenades" on the campaign trail, but quite another to try to manage the institutions of power after you've won the election.

In his introduction to Crossroads, Gingrich is suggesting that conservatives who take office should not only espouse conservative principles but they should also govern differently than their liberal predecessors. He calls this different method of governance "entrepreneurial public management" and describes it as using "the advances of science and technology combined with the creativity of entrepreneurs and the power of the market to give people a broader range of options . . . to offer more choices of higher quality at lower cost."

If he can actually develop a system of entrepreneurial public management that meets the high requirements of this definition, Speaker Gingrich will accomplish something truly new. It is striking that, for all of the drama accompanying the Republican’s achievement of unified government how little the structures of government have actually changed. With the exception of the Department of Homeland Security and the new position of Director of National Intelligence, none of the other Cabinet-level positions have changed. The bureaucracy under a Republican President and a Republican Congress looks virtually identical to that when the Democrats last held a unified government.

For all of the victories conservatives have seen at the polls, and also in the legislative arena, conservatives have not yet dismantled or truly re-invented any major area of government. Reform, to date, has been hesitant and incremental.

Conservative reformers for years have railed against the tax system, and yet the tax code remains basically unchanged. Bush’s first term tax bill merely lowered some rates. President Bush’s chief domestic initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act, has changed the way schools measure their progress and has given parents more leeway in choosing schools for their children, but the massive Department of Education bureaucracy is basically the same as it was twenty years ago.

The Speaker’s challenge to conservatives is to govern differently.

Whether Gingrich can deliver on the promise of a new method of governing remains to be seen.