Newt Gingrich takes a header into the dustbin

New York Times columnist and op-ed editor Gail Collins has come under attack for this recent column poking fun of Newt Gingrich for his marital infidelities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/opinion/collins-opening-newts-marriage.html?src=tp&smid=fb-share

Briefly, Collins has been accused of fermenting a story where there was none to advance a Democrat party agenda -and, as I understand it, of poor writing and logical fallacies in general.

The criticisms raised for me several questions that I found rather easily resolved when it come to assigning Newt his place on the Mt. Rushmore of  Hypocrisy.

Why does this column warrant an ad hominem attack upon the columnist?  To my knowledge, Collins has never declared herself a “genius” or, for that matter, a Democrat.  She did not identify the several “political playboys” by either name or party affiliation.  She is, at a minimum, an accomplished journalist, the first female op-ed editor of the Times, and she has earned her forum - just as Newt has earned his.

The column itself is merely a rather light hearted poke at a subject that has come under heightened scrutiny because Newt’s second wife – not the one he left because she had cancer, but the one he left when she was diagnosed with MS – elected to give an interview to Vanity Fair – and because of Newt’s incendiary response to it.

The media is not the issue.  Nor is Gail Collins.  The issue is whether this, (or any candidate’s) sexual mores, are relevant to his (or her) qualifications to become President.

Each one of us is free to decide to what degree marital infidelity and other matters of private and public morality matter in the selection of a president.  Which facts and circumstances do we believe mitigate, aggravate or negate infidelity?”  Are we concerned, indifferent, or oblivious to that infidelity as an isolated instance or pattern?  Do we believe such conduct to be reflective and indicative of a candidate’s trustworthiness, capacity for recklessness, lack of regard and respect for others?  Do we care a great deal, somewhat or not at all?

Personally, I would not have cared a great deal what Newt did in his bedroom, office or car as long as he stayed out of mine, yours and everyone else’s.  However, he has breached that wall so often he has forfeited the right to have his sexual appetites and peccadillos overlooked.  Now he stands revealed, yet again, as someone possessed of a nearly unfathomable sense of self –aggrandizement and entitlement coupled with an incalculable degree of hypocrisy, cynicism, crudity, selfishness, and cruelty.

This is the man who stood in the well of the House chamber day after day after day clamoring for Bill Clinton’s impeachment for emasculating family values and other “high crime and misdemeanors” by  having sex with "that woman", while maintaining his own bevy of supplicants at the ever ready.

This is the man who left his first wife in the midst of her battle with cancer, reportedly telling his then campaign finance chairman that, “She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President.  And besides, she has cancer."  Of course, you can also choose to believe Newt, when he tells us the former staffer was lying.

However, this is also the man who left his second wife as she was beginning her battle with MS.  Here is what she claims was his response when she asked him how he could justify delivering speeches on family values while living with another woman; “It doesn’t matter what I do.  People need to hear what I have to say.  There’s no one else who can say what I can say.  It doesn’t matter what I live.”

Either you accept that statement as an accurate quote or she is lying too.  On the other hand, you can blame it all on Vanity Fair (and, I suppose, their presumably all-Democratic editorial board) for publishing the interview in the first place.

I was not in the hospital, the bedroom or the front seat of his car, so I am in no position (no pun intended), to judge who is telling the truth in either of these instances.  However, Newt has a lengthy public record and has had a great many things to say that provide some context on whether he is capable of such stunning and appalling), hubris, including this gem, “I have enormous personal ambition.  I want to shift the entire planet.  And I’m doing it.  I am now a famous person.  I represent real power.”

Look.  Newt Gingrich is not going to become the Republican President candidate and he is never going to become President so, as soon as he either runs out of campaign dough or exhausts his vitriol against Willard, much of this becomes moot and Newt is consigned to the dustbin of history.

However, as long as he has chosen to place himself on a podium he has invited public scrutiny and his private behavior is relevant for both careful and systematic scrutiny or mockery as one chooses.
For this man who has famously said, “Morality no longer concerns matters of love, sharing, compassion, fairness, justice or tolerance, it now mostly concerns boobs on TV and denying queers pursuit of happiness” it is time for the dustbin.