Happy Thanksgiving! I’m at my parents’ house, getting ready for the meal. Because I was sooo cool as a teenager, there’s a copy of Newt Gingrich’s To Renew America on the shelf in my childhood bedroom. Given the rumors about the presidential race swirling around this week, this paragraph from the foreword to the 1996 paperback edition makes for interesting reading:

Rudy Giuliani has begun an historic renewal of New York City. His commitment to prosecuting criminals and supporting the police has led to an immediate reduction in crime and a dramatic increase in the sense of safety. Within months of Giuliani’s election people began telling me they had a new sense of security in walking around New York City. These very real changes reveal how strong leadership can change a society. Giuliani’s more recent efforts at cutting spending, eliminating red tape, shrinking the city’s bureaucracy, privatizing some city services, and lowering taxes to lure businesses to New York City (while keeping existing businesses from moving away) are great examples of this new vision of government.

John McCain and Mitt Romney are nowhere in the book’s index (though Tommy Thompson is).