The Wall Street Journal asked eleven of America's leaders in public policy to offer advice to the Obama administration. Below is Newt Gingrich's response. He describes Obama as one of the "smartest leaders ever to occupy the White House," and recommends that Obama should resist the temptation to overspend and overbureaucratize Washington. If Obama represents "change," he should move toward effective reform in our government at home, in the Middle East, and across the world.

Senior Fellow Newt Gingrich

President Barack Obama is one of the smartest leaders ever to occupy the White House. His transition has been centrist and responsible in tone. His appointments have been establishmentarian far more than radical left. His outreach to conservative intellectuals and to Republicans in the Congress has been positive and has had serious impact.

On the other hand, he has sustained the wildly expensive and ultimately destructive Bush policy of endless bailouts and government-centered stimulus packages. Mr. Obama's trillion dollars on top of Mr. Bush's trillion dollars represents the largest orgy of government control and government expenditure since the New Deal. The New Deal probably extended the Great Depression by at least five years. In fact, the United States did not really begin to recover from the crisis until World War II mobilization and procurement created massive economic growth.

There is a grave danger that the Obama administration will increase the power of government, but do so at the expense of the economy and of jobs. Similarly, the Obama team continues to articulate pious platitudes about setting a new tone in the Middle East while Hamas enthusiastically fires rockets into Israel and taunts the Israelis into launching larger and larger attacks on Gaza.

My deepest hope for the new administration is that in both domestic economics and foreign threats it will rapidly learn to distinguish between reality and its own campaign rhetoric.

Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at AEI.