Live Chat 12 p.m. ET: Newt’s March to the White House?

His momentum may be slowing, but a recent national poll placed Newt Gingrich in a dead heat with Mitt Romney at the lead of the Republican pack challenging President Obama in 2012.

His campaign — and recent stunning comeback — is the latest chapter in his long, determined march from a small town in Pennsylvania to the heights of power in Washington D.C.

We’ve been revisiting Gingrich’s dramatic story all this week with our classic 1996 investigative biography The Long March of Newt Gingrich.

As Gingrich’s campaign surged, the questions addressed in the film have taken on new urgency:

Who, really, is Newt Gingrich? What drives him? What kind of a leader is he? And what could we expect from a Gingrich presidency?

We asked two of the reporters behind the film, Peter Boyer and Stephen Talbot, to join us for a live chat to discuss these questions and take yours. Boyer still covers Gingrich today for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Here’s his most recent piece on the campaign.

Chris Moody, a reporter covering the presidential race for Yahoo!’s The Ticket blog, will be our guest questioner.

Peter Boyer is a reporter at the Daily Beast/Newsweek, which he joined after spending 18 years as staff writer at The New Yorker. In addition to The Long March of Newt Gingrich, Boyer served as a correspondent in a wide range of FRONTLINE episodes, including Waco: The Inside Story (1995), The Killer at Thurston High (2000) and L.A.P.D. Blues (2001).

Stephen Talbot is a reporter, producer and writer who has produced more than 30 documentaries and written for Salon, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post Magazine, among other publications. In addition to The Long March of Newt Gingrich, Talbot has produced a number of FRONTLINE films, including Why America Hates the Press (1996), and News War Part III: What’s Happening to the News? (2007).

Our guest questioner Chris Moody is a political reporter covering the 2012 presidential race for Yahoo!’s The Ticket blog. You can follow him on Twitter @chris_moody.