Always Good for a Scandal

He’s the latest Republican soap bubble in the search for a presidential candidate. He’s superb at appealing to the clueless. Obama couldn’t be happier.

The right wing and left wing both call him “Newt” in Washington. Sixty-eight-year-old Newton Gingrich had a part in every intrigue of the last 30 years. As a colleague of Ronald Reagan’s, as the leader of the “Republican Revolution” in the 1990s, as an adviser to the mortgage bank Freddie Mac, which was a major cause of the real estate bubble bursting in 2008.

But nobody suspected that Gingrich would some day become the Republican front-runner in the race for president, because he’s not only strong in the production of brilliant and provocative ideas, speeches and political attacks, he’s also infamous for being a chaotic and unpredictable leader whose leadership capabilities and discipline are as suspect and controversial in his own camp as they are with his strongest opponent.

Last summer when other Republican campaigns were running flat out, Gingrich’s campaign advisers threw in the towel, demoralized by miserable poll numbers for their candidate and disgusted by Gingrich’s escapades. After the first scandal concerning a line of credit at Tiffany & Co. jewelers in excess of several hundred thousand dollars, Gingrich and his wife embarked on a Greek island cruise while his competitors kept on campaigning.

His closest staff members became convinced early on that he was unsuited for the role of leader. His earliest attempts to be elected to Congress as an environmentally friendly Republican both ended in failure.

On Every Channel for Months

After that, he ran as an economic liberal with two central program themes: opposition to “big government” and support for deep spending cuts in the government budget. He was successful in bringing a Republican majority into the House of Representatives in 1994. As a reward, he was chosen as Speaker of the House, one of Washington politics’ most powerful and prestigious positions.

Gingrich, who can’t pass by a microphone without giving a speech, was on every broadcast channel for months. But he soon overreached: In protest of President Bill Clinton’s budget policies, he forced the very first government shutdown in U.S. history. That brought not only a swift decline in the public opinion polls; it also made him unpopular with his Republican colleagues.

A few years later, the House Ethics Committee punished Gingrich for misusing campaign funds, making him pay $300,000 in reparations. No other “Speaker” had ever fallen so far.

Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain have risen and fallen as party choices. Now it’s Gingrich’s turn. He courts the most radical elements of an already radical Republican Party, especially aggressive in seeking support from the tea party movement and conservative Christians.

All Sorts of Baggage

He has said he thinks child labor laws are unnecessary and that he would like to recruit school children in poor neighborhoods to works as janitorial helpers in schools to help them learn what work, discipline and earning a paycheck means. He also says — and repeats — that the Palestinians are an “invented people.”

But Gingrich already carries a huge amount of baggage around with him. He was paid $1.6 million by mortgage giant Freddie Mac shortly before the real estate bubble burst. He had three wives in rapid succession (Jackie, Marianne, and now Callista) as well as three religious affiliations in a row (Lutheran, Baptist and now Roman Catholic).

And another of his handicaps is the fact that the leading Democrat he would run against is backing him because every opinion poll shows that Obama would easily defeat Gingrich in the general election, whereas runner-up Mitt Romney would cause him more trouble.