Newt Gingrich is no longer the poll-leading not-Romney he was a month ago, thanks largely to millions worth of negative ads in Iowa.
But did you all know that back in summer 2010, Gingrich was leading the polls in many important states, and had raised "as much money as Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee combined"?
I didn't, until I read John H. Richardson's August 2010 Esquire article, "Newt Gingrich: The Indispensable Republican", this evening.
Richardson scored the first (and only, AFAIK) extended interview with Gingrich's second wife Marianne, who was married to him from 1981 to 2000, during his rise to House Speaker, and fall from that.
And he tells the basic narrative of Newt's unique political career, as "an epic and bizarre story of American power in an unsettled age."
More, below.
First of all, read the whole thing -- there's a lot of 1990s political history and an uncomfortable interview with Newt in there.
Of course, Marianne Gingrich says that Newt has lied about how their marriage ended, though she did not contest his request that she cooperate in getting a weird annulment.
But should Newt be President, Richardson asked:
She gives a jaundiced look. "There's no way," she says.
She thinks he made a choice long ago between doing the right thing and getting rich, and when you make those choices, you foreclose other ones. "He could have been president. But when you try and change your history too much, and try and recolor it because you don't like the way it was or you want it to be different to prove something new ... you lose touch with who you really are. You lose your way."
snip
"He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don't have to be connected," she says. "If you believe that, then yeah, you can run for president."
Sitting on a bench, she squints against the light. "He always told me that he's always going to pull the rabbit out of the hat," she says.
Newt's magic act worked in one way -- his money-making schemes as a Congressman and as Speaker did not work out, due to House ethics rules, but he has since found a way to become a multi-millionaire via books, speeches and videos targeted at the wingnut check-writing demographic.
Newt teared up about his manic-depressive mother today, but according to Marianne:
He didn't talk to his mother much. He just didn't have patience with her. And she was pretty drugged up for a long time.
Newt's story about how he was a 4-year-old, and his same-age-as-his-daughter third wife was 5 provoked Marianne:
Her eyes go wide when she hears his line about being four to Callista's five. "You know where that line came from? Me. That's my line. That's what I told him."
She pauses for a moment, turning it over in her mind. Then she shakes her head in wonder. "I'm sorry, that's so freaky."
From her perspective of 20 years with Newt, more than the other two wives combined, Marianne knows a good bit about him:
Newt always wanted to be somebody.
That was his vulnerability, do you understand? Being treated important. Which means he was gonna associate with people who would stroke him, and were important themselves.
And in that vulnerability, once you go down that path and it goes unchecked, you add to it. Like, 'Oh, I'm drinking, who cares?' Then you start being a little whore, 'cause that comes with drinking.
That's what corruption is — when you're too exhausted, you're gonna go with your weakness. So when we see corruption, we shouldn't say, "They're all corrupt."
Rather, we should say, "At what point did you decide that? And why? Why were you vulnerable?"
The break-up of their marriage was manhandled by Newt:
Marianne was having problems of her own. After going to the doctor for a mysterious tingling in her hand, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Early in May, she went out to Ohio for her mother's birthday. A day and a half went by and Newt didn't return her calls, which was strange. They always talked every day, often ten times a day, so she was frantic by the time he called to say he needed to talk to her.
"About what?"
He wanted to talk in person, he said.
"I said, 'No, we need to talk now.' "
He went quiet.
"There's somebody else, isn't there?"
She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?
When they did some counseling, Newt came up with an absurd car metaphor, and an insulting offer:
(Newt) just kept saying (Marianne) was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. "I can't handle a Jaguar right now," he said that many times. "All I want is a Chevrolet."
He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.
Newt's conceit that Callista is a Chevrolet, with her Tiffany jewels, three-figure haircuts/treatments, and designer clothes, and that the relatively plain-Jane Marianne is a Jaguar is ridiculous.
Just another lie he told to justify another adultery.
It gets worse, Newt's lawyer told the press that he and Marianne had an understanding that allowed him to cheat on her.
Her response to that:
Of course not. It's silly.
Newt's serial adultery and lying about it should disqualify him as a candidate for anything, much less President, of the Religious Right party.
It did not, which shows that the Religious Right party is far more Right than Religious.
There is plenty more in the article that proves that Newt is temperamentally unsuited to be President.
Iowa Republicans seem to get that, but one never knows with wingnuts -- they may have moved away from Newt mostly because of TV ads that claim he's not wingnut enough.
Whatever, this was his last chance to pull the ultimate rabbit out of the hat, and Newt Gingrich will never be the Republican nominee for President.