WHAT WILL WE DO NOW FOR MORAL LEADERSHIP?

10/1/07

Newt Gingrich said last week that he will not be seeking the presidency in 2008. He gave as a reason his desire to spend more time with one of those half-hindquartered “education projects” politicians concoct in order to avoid getting real jobs while waiting for the next taxpayer-provided sinecure to pop up. This tendency to set up “education projects” and think tanks is growing especially common among “conservative” politicians whose enthusiasm for the private sector seems to dull rapidly when they are faced with the prospect of having to actually work in the private sector, but I digress.

One would like to credit Mr. Gingrich for not falling back on the banal “wanting to spend more time with my family” excuse for taking a (very) brief sabbatical from the Washington his ilk claims to so despise but somehow can’t seem to leave. However, such credit quickly evaporates when one realizes that if Mr. Gingrich were to use such an excuse, the most salient question would be “Which family, Newt? You’ve abandoned so many.” So perhaps his not falling back on that whopper was more a matter of expediency than originality. Again, though, I digress.

So Mr. Gingrich, whose most notable feature for his entire adult life has been his political ambition, and who has made no secret of his desire for The Big Job, suddenly finds some Rube Goldberg vehicle for self-aggrandizement more compelling than the presidency. Uh-huh. The really amazing thing about this absurd contention is that he expects us to believe it, but perhaps this is not amazing at all but merely a reflection of the politician’s tendency to lie because doing so comes more naturally than telling the truth.

Newt Gingrich is a scoundrel, a moral pygmy, a hypocrite, an opportunist, a solipsist, a popinjay, and a poltroon, among other things. But he is not stupid. The reason he is not running is that he realizes that a Republican has about as much chance of winning the presidency in 2008 as you and I have of winning the Lottery. Why waste time, energy, and money? Besides, if Mr. Gingrich can resist the temptation to abandon another wife when staying with her becomes inconvenient, or merely cramps his relentless lecherous pursuits with staff member and other political groupies, maybe the short-memoried American voter will forget all about Mr. Gingrich’s ghastly personal life and join his crusade for a moral makeover of America.