The Latest Scandals
Taxes: What does it matter that Gingrich released
one year of his tax records? Any candidate can prep them a year in
advance. Were I running for office a year or two down the road, and were
I cynical, this year I would triple my charitable contributions, cut
back on freelance writing to lower my income, and trim my deductions —
on the assumption that one transparent year would be proof of thirty out
of sight. So to be fair, Gingrich and all the candidates, if we go down
this full-disclosure road, should release the last three years of
returns. If so, I suggest that Gingrich will have as many tax/income
problems as Romney.
Women: The Marianne Gingrich Nightline
tell-all was a bust. In theory, we must sympathize with her: 60-ish,
without much income, suffering from MS, forced to watch her ex — now
soaring, both financially and politically, without her and without
apparent acknowledgment of her long support for his career that must now
be evident in his success — with insult added to injury as Newt parades
around a younger, more attractive third wife as if he were a perpetual
honeymooner. But to hear her is almost immediately to wonder, “Hmmm,
let’s get this straight: you are mad that Mrs. Gingrich III and Newt did
to Mrs. Gingrich II what you and Newt did to Mrs. Gingrich I? If you
were sick and penniless when he left you, so was the poor first wife
whom you once replaced.”
I wish I could believe (because I want to believe) that fidelity is
essential in a leader, but unfortunately history tells me that Charles
Lindbergh was a better pilot and inspiration than his more moral rivals,
that the wayward George S. Patton saved thousands of lives by his
brilliance in a way the more admirable but limited Omar Bradley did not,
that the randy Bill Clinton was a better president than the devout
Jimmy Carter, and that recklessly promiscuous JFK was no worse and
probably more effective than loyal Richard Nixon. But marriage has so
many variables (the devout husband can be mentally cruel and
indifferent, the noble wife can be a shrew, the publicly supportive
spouse can privately forgo sex, the faithful husband can be lazy and a
leach), and leadership so many contours (natural brilliance, rhetorical
flair, stamina, courage), that fidelity in marriage simply cannot quite
trump them all. Was the wonderfully devoted Harry Truman a better
president than Dwight D. Eisenhower (who once or twice probably strayed
with his chaufferess), and if so, was it because he never looked at
other women other than Bess? In short, the ABC interview was a dud. It
only confirmed that dragging out a 12-year-old story on the eve of an
election told us more about the morality of ABC than of present-day Newt Gingrich.
Romney’s money: Cannot Romney explain that, to be
blunt, he does not have, and does not need, a regular day job any more?
And therefore he does not pay taxes on income? In other words, cannot
Mitt say that he once was so skilled or lucky that he made enough to
allow him in retirement to either sell assets yearly, or buy and sell
from his ample portfolio and therefore be taxed at the capital gains
rate? The same unapologetic defiance should apply to Bain. If one
devotes his career to winning the good life from taking over, trimming
down, and selling companies, and one is not solely interested in cashing
in and others be damned, cannot he in one minute, Newt-style, explain
why he is a sort of personal trainer that both profits and does good
from beating the out-of-shape into shape, and that when he cannot work
with the flabby and unresponsive, he moves on?
The alternative is the sort of well-intentioned stumble in which the
viewer sighs, “Come on, Mitt, you can do it. Don’t apologize or don’t
gloss over, but explain, your success!”
Newt Gingrich
Why his death/resurrection/death/resurrection candidacy? His
so-called checkered past and shoot-from-the-hip binges ensure that, on
any given day, something arises from his past (women, book deals,
consulting, etc.) or he says something provocative that leads nowhere
(dressing down federal judges) which confirms the general take that he
is too unstable for executive governance — a charge buttressed by the
fact that Gingrich has never run a state or a business. But then, just
when the op-ed writers and worried Republican elders write him off, he
begins his comeback by questioning, rather than merely critiquing, the
entire liberal experiment.
So he attacks the nature of the journalist’s question
rather than answers it; he rails at overspending but in an existential
way that suggests it is a symptom of a deeper malady; he assesses his
rivals in the abstract as well as the personal. That takes gumption and
talent.
The effect on primary voters? Gingrich becomes their everyman.
He speaks for the beaten-down conservative, sick of reading about D.C.
insider politics, race-baiting, crime, media bias, or apologizing
abroad, as if to say, “I am your idea guy, your own PhD know-it-all, the
good D.C. insider on your side who knows how the bad works, and I’ll
out-talk, out-argue, out-think, and out-emote the entire Ivy-League
elite Obama technocracy.” (Though I am not so sure he would win a debate
with Obama given the exposure he offers through so many claims of
multifaceted genius.)
So how long can the wild Gingrich needle graph go up and down, given
his uncanny ability to die and be reborn a thousand times? I’d say about
a month longer when one of two things will occur. One scenario: He is
so thoroughly vetted that no more disclosures can emerge and he stops
expounding ad hoc on Newtology in a way that confirms an undisciplined
and wacky nature. In that case, he has a 50/50 chance of winning the
nomination, regardless of the current status of his funding,
organization, and endorsements. Or, we will hear yet a new Newtism
(e.g., something like another neo-Marxist take on Bain Capital), or yet
another brilliantly unworkable plan that serves as a proverbial last
straw on the camel’s back, and the voters collectively sigh that they prefer Romney
and pray he is not Dole, Bush Sr., or John McCain, more convinced that
Gingrich is a Goldwater albatross rather than a Reagan savior.
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