The “Be careful what you wish for” trope has been resonating politically for the last month. Or for as long as Newt Gingrich has been topping the Republican presidential-candidate polls.
That’s because conventional political wisdom, which is often more conventional than wise, had been goading Democrats to go after Mitt Romney more than Gingrich. We saw that in the Democratic National Committee’s “Mitt v. Mitt” ad. The reasons were manifestly obvious. Gingrich would be easier for President Barack Obama to beat than Romney, the business guy with the Don Draper look and the presidential mien. Even conservative radio host Michael Savage has offered Gingrich $1 million to drop out because he doesn’t like his chances against Obama.
The Democrats’ wishful reasoning is familiar by now. Gingrich is consummately flawed. And his contortionist policy positions–from health-care mandate and cap-and-trade to TARP and illegal immigrants–shouldn’t impress either side of the spectrum.
He’s temperament-challenged and forever stained as the one-man wrecking crew in that notorious government shut-down in the ’90s. He later quit Congress over ethical baggage–and relocated a few blocks away to set up shop as a K Street historian. He was the lead adulterer in the charge to impeach Bill Clinton. More recently there was the Freddie Mac debacle, that nearly $500,000 line of Tiffany’s credit and the prospect of a First Lady once known as “the other woman.” And being at the beck and call of Donald Trump and his self-serving “debate” was an ironically obsequious touch. Hardly presidential.
Moreover, he’s condescending and pedantic, a visceral electorate turn-off. Surely, the Republican Party would (Captain Kanga)rue the day they ever made him their nominee.
And yet.
When Gingrich is on his rhetorical game–and he’s been on a debater’s roll for a while now–he’s very effective. He’s fast on his forensic feet. He’s his own best propaganda machine and quick with the quip. When necessary, he’s an impressive ad hoc revisionist on any inconvenient truth.
Ask him about his “mandate” stance and he goes on the offensive to remind everyone that it was part of a pragmatic approach in opposition to “HillaryCare.” A “political careerist?” Hell, that’s what Romney aspired to be, only to lose to Ted Kennedy back in ’94. That adultery flap? Why should anyone care about those
less forgiving than God? Referencing “an invented Palestinian people”? Well, he’s the only historian running–and too many Americans wouldn’t know an Ottoman from a footstool. When in doubt? Go dismissive: check your facts.
And it’s working. Because brash and bold has appeal when a party is looking for someone to sic on the status quo. Even GOP activists who are usually more enamored of bumper-sticker intellectualism. Gingrich comes across as an intriguing hybrid: part professor, part provocateur. A Ph.D. with an in-your-face M.O. A party presumably could get used to not having to concede “smartest guy in the room” status to the other side.
But there’s a reason why the “Be careful what you wish for” admonition is often invoked about this time in the election cycle. Too much precedent. Exhibit A for contemporary presidential politics: the Jimmy Carter re-election campaign. The Carter Administration knew–in the context of “stagflation” and the Iranian-hostage crisis–it was in trouble in 1980. Especially, they believed, if George H.W. Bush, Yale grad, war hero, former CIA director and former ambassador to the United Nations and China, were the Republican nominee.
So they were hoping to undermine Bush to the degree that it might make the nomination of Ronald Reagan more likely. After all, Reagan, a Eureka College grad whose military experience was confined to the cinematic, was considered a lightweight. Sure, he had been governor of California, but “Bedtime for Bonzo” would get as much mention. Former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford had infamously labeled him an “amiable dunce.” Reagan was known to doze off at inopportune times. He would be 70 if elected.
The Carter people got their candidate. The rest is history. “There you go again”?