The scene was the kind that happens almost every morning in Washington. At a downtown think tank, one expert was introducing another at a conference so thinly attended that two-thirds of the seats around the table were empty. The question at hand: health care and, specifically, how emotions affect organic processes. When the visiting authority launched into a scientific explanation of why panic constricts the arteries, the other one cut him off. "First of all," Newt Gingrich interrupted, "you have to tell them about petting bunnies."
When Gingrich resigned as House Speaker a year ago, the only thing that seemed certain...