The topic that I am about to treat in this post might be a provocative starting point for a discussion in a wide range of courses: a course on rhetoric or argument, a course on mass media or news reporting, or a course on recent American political history, the nature of celebrity, or the increasing confluence of political and economic influence and celebrity. Moreover, despite the hyper-partisanship that seems to turn any discussion of politics or political figures into a cause for controversy that seems to strain the bounds of academic freedom, I doubt that any discussion of Newt Gingrich’s political career—and, in particular, his recent career—will provoke outrage, or even any sort of strong emotions, in anyone.
Earlier this evening, I was watching the reincarnation of Crossfire on CNN. The show now features Newt Gingrich and S.E. Cupp, representing the political Right, and Stephanie Cutter and Van Jones, representing the political Left. At the risk of stating what is obvious–and what has perhaps ever been the case, regardless of the context– Gingrich seems to be an odd fit, the odd man out. Not only is he considerably older than the other three regulars on the show, but he is also the only former office holder, the only prominent political figure, in the group.
But even more than those considerations, Gingrich’s laughably inept run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2011-2012 seemed to me to have dealt a death blow to any remaining credibility that he might have had.
I acknowledge that failed politicians often reinvent themselves as political commentators. But often their political careers have crashed because of some sort of personal behavior of humiliating proportions that was too stigmatizing to be outlasted while retaining their office—and not because they made fools out of themselves politically. Eliot Spitzer seems to provide the most ready illustration.
Among those unsuccessful candidates who have become political commentators, and in the process have kept themselves in the conversation as future candidates, the most notable right now may be Mike Huckabee, who hosts his own nightly show on Fox News. But, Huckabee’s failed political aspirations have not significantly altered the public perception of him, or of the public, political persona that he projects. The unsuccessful campaigns that he has conducted have not damaged his credibility as either a political commentator or as a possible future candidate. Even the recent speech in which Huckabee tried unsuccessfully to caricature, to ridicule, the Democrats’ support for contraception coverage in all healthcare plans did not create a dramatic shift in the perception of him. Instead, despite all of the hullabaloo that the speech provoked, it seems to have reinforced his credibility among those on the Far Right while confirming to Progressives that he is essentially a mild-mannered front man for the lunatic fringe of his party.
In contrast, in that laughably inept campaign for the presidential nomination in 2011-2012, Newt Gingrich took a political career that had long appeared to be dead in the water, briefly breathed life into its tattered sails, and then in very short order, ran it aground onto a reef that quickly tore out the entire hold of the ship. But, to appreciate the comic scale of the catastrophe that was his campaign, one has to imagine people diving off the deck of the crumbling ship into just a couple of feet of water and then being immediately set upon by hordes of crabs too small to inflict serious injuries on them but so numerous that they would induce a sort of mad panic.
To illustrate, what follows is a series of article titles about the Gingrich campaign, presented in chronological order from November 2011 to March 2012. Even apart from the full articles, I think that these titles convey the air of preposterousness that surrounded Gingrich’s brief ascendancy as a contender for the Republican nomination. Even though the candidates for that nomination were a rare collection of political non-entities whose campaigns–for the highest office in the nation and the most important and powerful political position in the world–were each in their own ways more absurd that Gingrich’s own, none of them—not even Herman Cain—inspired the sort of giggly astonishment that Gingrich seemed to provoke at every available turn.
And as I watch him now on Crossfire titles, I have not been able to forget that he was so recently the focus of the giggly astonishment captured in these titles:
“Newt as a Teacher of the Rules of Civilization”
“Five Myths about Newt Gingrich”
“The Making of Newt, Inc.”
“How Newt Is Channeling The Producers”
“Next Stop on the GOP Crazy Trains—Newtsville”
“Newt’s a Flip-Flopper of Romnetic Proportions”
“Two Views of Newt’s Baggage”
“Why No One Is Talking about Newt’s Weight”
“My Man Newt” (by Maureen Dowd)
“My Favorite Newt Photo”
“The Nastiness of Newt”
“Newt’s Most Outlandish Positions”
“Newt, the Idea Factory”
“The America of Newt’s Imagination”
“Why Newt Will Never Be the Nominee”
“Heartbreak Awaits Newt’s Supporters”
“Newt’s Serial Marriages and Serial Religious Conversions”
“Romney vs. Gingrich vs. Gingrich”
“Why Newt’s Surge Is Real”
“Babbling His Way to the White House”
“Who Needs Pants, Newt Has Passion”
“’Fundamentally’ Is Newt’s Favorite Word”
“Is Newt Nuts?”
“The Deep Shallowness of Prof. Gingrich”
“Newt’s Literally Selling Himself”
“Newt, Government-Sponsored Sinner”
“Newt’s Erroneous Ethics Alibi”
“Newt as a ‘Rockefeller Republican’”
“Newt Is Wild about Zoos”
“The Newt Thing Gets More Serious”
“Apocalypse Newt”
“Newt Gingrich and the Audacity of Audacity”
“Newtisms”
“The Un-Newtening”
“Honeymoons in Space” (another one by Maureen Dowd)
“Newt on Capitalism—His Three F-Words”
“Newt, America’s Greatest Attack Politician”
“Newt’s Past and Future Leadership”
“Newt and the Right’s Insane Idea Factory”
“Newt, the Historian”
“Newt, the Idea Thief”
“Newt’s Famous Chutzpah Saves Him”
“Newt and the Ethanol Lobby”
“Newt’s Revisionist History”
“Callista Gingrich’s Hair”
“Newt Courting Disaster”
“Newt’s Miscarriage of Justice”
“The Brilliance of Newt”
“Newt’s Bipolar Mother”
“Why Newt Is Headed for Footnote Status”
“Newt Takes New Hampshire for Granted”
“Newt’s Bad Precedents”
“Newt’s Crash-and-Burn Speakership”
“Moments in Newt’s Life and Historical Equivalents”
“Newt’s Dubious Version of His First Divorce”
“The Id of Newt”
“Newt Refuses to Share his Calamari”
“Newt’s Flip-Flop on Energy Has Been Profitable”
“Newt’s 1996 Memo on Political Language”
“How Newt Blew It in Iowa”
“The Newtification of Mitt Romney”
“Pity Poor Newt (and Us)”
“Newt, the Bottle Rocket”
“Newt’s Living Wake”
“Poll: What Is Newt Short For”
“Newt at West Georgia College”
“The Past That Newt Can’t Outrun”
“Newt’s Traditional Values”
“Open Marriage and the Calista Fairytale”
“The Re-Re-Newtening”
“Why the Media Keeps Underestimating newt”
“Marianne and Newt’s First Marriage”
“Newt’s Code Words”
“Ex-Wife’s Lawyer: Newt Is a Narcissist”
“It’s a Whole Newt Ballgame!”
“Mitt, the Man Who Gave Us Newt”
“Newt Exploits the Politics of Class and Culture”
“Newt , the Master of Disguise”
“Newt and the Politics of Class and Culture”
“Newt’s Visceral Appeal vs. His History”
“The Newt of the Poisoned Tree”
“Why Newt”
“Actually Newt’s Not a Very Good Debater”
“Mewt Gromney”
“Newt and the Rise of the Hoi Polloi”
“Newt, the Republican Clinton”
“The Billionaire behind Newt”
“Newt’s Right: Unleash the Crowds”
“Newtzilla’s Return”
“Angry Newt Is Back”
“Newt: Outsider or Just Unpopular”
“Newt’s No-Win Political Appeal”
“Newtclear Bomb”
“Send Us Newt”
“What Newt Looks like When He Is Lying”
“Don’t Wish for a Newt Nomination”
“The Self-Destruction of Newt”
“Cain Thinks Newt’s Able”
“Newt’s Long March”
“Newt’s Backyard Politics”
“Newt’s Long, Lonely Road”
“Now Newt May Get Even Nastier”
“Why Futility Might Not Matter to Newt”
Altogether, it’s enough to make one miss Newt—that is, if he would ever actually go away.
Since I wrote a book about Newt Gingrich back when he mattered in 1996 (read it here on Google books, http://books.google.com/books?id=0jUA65oCqrIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false), and I felt despair when his presidential campaign failed, let me comment on this. I don’t agree that a long list of critical articles about Newt proves anything, since anyone could easily look at right-wing websites to find a similar list about the Clintons, Al Gore, or Barack Obama. Nor do I think that Gingrich ran a laughably inept campaign in 2012, and that certainly wasn’t the reason why he failed.
In my 1996 book, I argued that Newt was a pseudo-intellectual, a vapid, politically corrupt, far right-wing narcissist. My opinion of him hasn’t changed much, but the Tea Party has left him in the dust. But in 1996, Newt represented the right-wing of the Republican Party. In 2012, I would argue, Newt lost the Republican nomination because he wasn’t enough of a rigid far right ideologue. He was willing to talk about his imaginative (compared to other candidates) ideas about space and immigration and health care. Newt is now one of the most thoughtful and intellectual figures in the conservative movement, which only shows how far conservatism has fallen. The fact that Newt is willing to take a job at CNN and debate liberals only shows how alienated he is from the Tea Party, where such things are regarded as a betrayal. For the Tea Party and people like Rush Limbaugh (whom I also wrote a book about), debating ideas with liberals is utterly alien and viewed with suspicion.
For some reason (and from this vantage point, that I am a digital hoarder may be as good as explanation as any), I saved hundreds of articles on each of the potential nominees for both parties in 2011 and 2012, and, believe me, none of them were collectively as goofy as those on Newt. I admit that this is a completely subjective and inconclusive exercise, but this is a blog post, and not a scholarly article. And, besides all of that, I have no special animus toward Newt, no particular axe to grind.
His campaign was laughably inept because he somehow thought that he could make a “serious” run at the nomination without paying attention to basic political necessities–broad-based fundraising, grassroots organizing, and the creation of a state to state, never mind county to county, network of political supporters. In short, he seemed to think that he could win the nomination by running a non-campaign comparable to those which “un-serious” candidates such as Donald Trump were running. For a veteran politician, this approach seemed a demonstration of an unaccountable combination of laziness and hubris.
I think that the first sentence in your second paragraph may be a more succinct summary of my view of Newt than anything that I have managed to write.
But, the idea that Newt looks “good” in comparison to the knotheads who are currently making the most noise on the Far Right ( a bunch of them now seem to be clustered in the Texas congressional delegation, but that is a topic for another post) seems to me to be, at best, a very dubious distinction.
If you surrounded me with 400- to 500-pound men, I would be the “thin guy” in that group, but that wouldn’t make me thin. Indeed, for anyone with any sense of irony, such a comparison would simply serve to emphasize the absurdity in regarding me as thin.
I think that we have to take the threats being posed by ideologues, demagogues, political opportunists, and high-profile charlatans very seriously, but I don’t think that we should take the individuals themselves at all seriously, for that in itself confers on them a degree of legitimacy that I am not willing to extend to them.
Reblogged this on Ohio Politics.