Monday, March 14, 2011

Quote of the Day (Newt Gingrich, From Patriotism to Hanky-Panky)


“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."—Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, explaining to David Brody of the Christian Broadcast Network how two prior marriages collapsed because of his extramarital affairs, quoted in Maggie Haberman, “Newt Gingrich: ‘I Was Doing Things That Were Wrong,’” Politico.com, March 8, 2011

Faithful Readers, you might have noticed that on Mondays, my “Quote of the Day” tends to be humorous. The liberal contingent among you might have assumed from the scary image accompanying today’s post that this time my circuits got crossed and I was running a Halloween-oriented quote. You’re undoubtedly angry with me, then, for not giving you sufficient warning to steer the kiddies away from this Internet horror show.

But once you get past that alarming image of Newt Gingrich, I’m certain you’ll agree that I am, in fact, adhering to my Funny Monday routine. If the above quote isn’t the funniest thing I’ve ever put out there for you—well, it’s got to be among the top five, anyway.

In her New York Times column on Saturday, Gail Collins put me onto the scent of this preposterous speculation by what should have been, by all rights, this year’s most unlikely Presidential candidate. It turned out that she could only hint at the half of it.

Throughout the 1990s, I groaned about the Clinton-Gingrich Era, an age of polarization led by two baby-boomer politicos who, in temperament if not party, had more than a little in common:

*Both hailed from the South;
* both sought to weasel their way out of military commitments during the Vietnam War;
* both were, at one time or another, college instructors who were policy wonks at heart;
* both reshaped their party in their own image, leading the faithful back from the political wilderness;
* both possessed volcanic tempers;
* both possessed mighty high opinions of their potential (Clinton famously marketed himself in the 1992 Presidential election as an “agent of change,” while Gingrich, according to Bush I budget director Richard Darman, trashed negotiations with House Democrats in 1990 to further his own ambitions).

But I find this especially fascinating: Both men thought they could surmount any trouble over serial infidelities by holding to the novel notion that oral sex really wasn’t sex. (At the height of the Lewinsky imbroglio, I quizzed a couple of married friends about how their wives would react if they made a similar claim. Both agreed that they wouldn’t live to tell the tale afterward.)

A couple of years ago, I rejoiced. Slick Willie had been effectively neutered--blamed for Hillary’s loss of a Democratic nomination that was hers to lose, then effectively sidelined while she ran the State Department. Meanwhile, I vividly recalled a friend telling me how, after his resignation as Speaker of the House following his own missteps, Gingrich had been spotted in New York, visiting a publisher--and nobody seemed to pay him any mind on the street.

The Clinton-Gingrich Era belonged to the ages, I thought.

Boy, was I wrong.

I attribute Gingrich’s desire to achieve the Oval Office in the face of embarrassing disclosures about his personal life--not to mention his most unusual justification for said walk on the wild side--to Clinton. The Comeback Kid’s relationships were so multiple, so out there, that they provided other politicos across the country with practically step-by-step instructions on how to make centers of government actions also centers of personal action. The outcome of the Lewinsky scandal led more than one commentator to conclude that perhaps America was finally shedding its Puritanism and acting more like Europe in its attitude toward sins of the flesh.

In an interview with Esquire, Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne, discussed how her (now ex) husband had been called to a 1998 Oval Office meeting by Clinton, who told him, “You’re a lot like me.” What that meant exactly would soon become apparent with revelations of his own tomcatting, but even before then, Gingrich became unusually hesitant about resorting to his usual rhetorical flame-throwing approach. Clinton survived the 1998 midterm election very well indeed, but Gingrich didn’t. A dozen years later, it still must eat at him.

Now watch the wheels of Newt’s mind spin. Last year, he surely took note of Clinton’s justification to friend and historian Taylor Branch about how the Lewinsky affair transpired. (It occurred after the death of Clinton’s mother, the Democrats’ loss of Congress in the ‘94 elections, the widening Whitewater scandal, according to the ex-President. In this telling, the leader of the free world felt unexpectedly vulnerable when the intern came by during the Gingrich-engineered government shutdown of November 1995.)

That revelation--if that’s the right word for it--didn’t cause much of a stir, let alone merriment, when it was trotted out a year ago, Gingrich must have reasoned. “Why can’t I try it out with evangelical voters?” he surely thought. “And I can subliminally support it by constantly repeating the name of another divorced politician who went on to win the Presidency: Ronald Reagan.”

Gingrich--and Clinton--might have chosen another route in speaking about their errant ways. Hugh Grant pioneered this approach, and his account to Larry King (not to mention Jay Leno and other talk-show hosts) about his mad encounter with Divine Brown got him off the hook with the public: “I could accept some of the things that people have explained, 'stress,' 'pressure,' 'loneliness' -- that that was the reason. But that would be false. In the end you have to come clean and say 'I did something dishonorable, shabby and goatish.'"

Several months ago, describing the President’s 2008 campaign, Gingrich called the President “authentically dishonest.” He has also speculated that the President might be subject to impeachment for giving up the “don’t ask, don’t tell” stance concerning gays in the military.

The ex-Speaker does all of this at enormous peril to his own thin hopes for winning the high office he has craved for so long. Americans still want to feel comfortable with the character of the man they put in the nation’s highest office. If they have a choice between a still-married father of two and a man who requested divorces from two wives as they faced health crises--not to mention a man with a hilarious explanation for past misconduct--then Gingrich--not to mention a party that might just be silly enough to nominate someone who's repeatedly done something, in Grant's memorable phrase, "dishonorable, shabby and goatish"--shouldn’t be surprised at the outcome.

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