WHAT ARE WE to do about Newt Gingrich? He would have us believe that he is the reincarnation of King Solomon, with the only difference being that Solomon had 300 wives and Newt a mere three (so far). No longer the underdog in the GOP presidential workouts - not for the moment, at least - he is enjoying his new celebrity by telling people about all of the ways he has played big roles in the best things that have happened in America. For starters, as a congressman, he led the successful fight against Communism, he told Sean Hannity on Fox in a pattycake interview appropriately staged in Tommy's Country Ham House in Greenville, S.C. (Fox called it, um...a "candid conversation".)
There's more, only because we're talking about Newt and not Solomon here. He wisely helped the Democratic House speaker to balance the budget four times. He sagaciously helped both Ronald Reagan and Jack Kennedy develop supply-side economics and sagely reformed welfare entitlements. There would be more self-applied merit badges but the interview had to end at a reasonable hour. How disloyal the House, then, to fine him $300,0o0 and reprimand him for ethics violations!
"People want somebody with very substantial big ideas," Newt said modestly, reflecting on his own ascension as America's can-do Professor. He says these things in a matter-of–fact way as if to make you wonder why you didn't already know that.
What? An $1.8 million contract with Freddie Mac, which Newt had criticized for its manipulative mortgage investments? For Heaven's sake, he wasn't lobbying for the outfit, he says, but rather advising it on how to survive from the perspective of a historian.
I have a feeling that he is just getting started on his dreamy history tales, and there's so little time left before the election 11 months away. So in the standard version of a man who comes home to find his wife in bed with the plumber, Gingrich has developed his own escape hatch for his negatives, from a million-dollar credit line at Tiffany's to how he wowed all of his colleagues in Congress. Simple, he says: "I can explain everything."
Even Joe Scarborough, MSNBC talk show host and former Republican congressman himself, isn't quite sure. "He's out of control," Scarborough growled. "Give me a break. His comments are an insult to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush." Others have referred to Newt's "supersized ego" but seldom of his broad expanse of wisdom.
Take it easy guys. I at least want him to get to the place where he invented the forward pass. And how he led the assault on bin Laden. Even Solomon wasn't up to those feats.
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The Great Bloviator's mouth is unstoppable. I expect any moment to learn that he parted the Red Sea, was chief architect for the Pyramids, ascended Mount Everest and Annapurna on his hands and knees (both on the same day), and wrote the first draft of the Marshall Plan. He has made such a caricature of himself that even George Will, the self-professed oracle of conservatism, finds him insufferable. He is giving a worse name even to egomania. It's hard to put a finger on the source of his stream-of-consciousness "big ideas" without the help of a brain pathologist. Should he ever, God forbid, become president of this beleaguered country, our nation would be a train wreck waiting to happen.
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