Newt and the ‘moral
thing’
By Wesley Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
Politicians can’t any longer talk about “moral
character” without sounding like a stuffy Baptist
deacon or a stiff Presbyterian elder. “Moral
character” is no longer important in a presidential
campaign, even to many conservatives and
evangelicals. Only as a talking point.
This was not always so. Barry Goldwater struck the
match that ignited the modern conservative movement
in 1964, and the tinder that fed the fire was “moral
character.”
Nelson Rockefeller was the odds-on favorite to be
the Republican presidential nominee that year.
Everybody said so. But early in the season he
discarded his wife of many years, married a younger
woman named Happy and survived, but only barely, as
a credible candidate. He entered the crucial
California primary, which was then the final test
leading to the national nominating convention, as
the favorite.
Alas, nature intervened. Happy delivered their first
child only days before the primary, reminding
everyone again of what was widely regarded as “the
sordid Rockefeller romance.” Barry Goldwater won the
primary, the nomination, and lost the election to
Lyndon B. Johnson in a landslide.
We’ve come a long way since then. The wild and
wanton decade of the ‘60s swept away standards like
so much household trash and celebrity replaced
“moral character” as a crucial qualification for
high office. Progress: it’s wonderful.
Newt Gingrich testifies to that. Newt thinks
anything goes. He may be correct. Wife No. 2
revealed that when Newt demanded an “open marriage”
in the spirit of fair play so he could share his
wondrous self with all the women demanding to be let
into his bed, she asked how he squared that with his
blabber and bloviation about “family values.” That
was easy. “People want to hear what I have to say,”
he told her. “It doesn’t matter what I do.”
Good ol’ Bubba, bless his pea-picking heart, had a
Hot Springs sense of shame that instructed him to
lie about it, even though it led to impeachment and
the humiliation of a nation that twice bestowed its
highest honor on him. “I did not have sex with that
woman,” he famously said, and then, as if trying to
remember which one, added: ” . . . Miss Lewinsky.”
Newt not only has no shame, but doesn’t understand
why anyone thinks he should. “It’s not about sex,”
says Victoria Toensing, a sometime television
commentator and the lawyer for Wife No. 2, nor was
it “about a wife rejected. Rather it was an insight
into the persona of Newt. When he gets power he
believes the rules do not apply to him.”
You can’t blame the slippery Newt for thinking so.
But you can blame public inattention to the evidence
of who he is. On election night in South Carolina
the interlocutor for a CNN-TV focus group asked a
young woman, identified as an evangelical Christian,
why she supports Newt. She replied earnestly that it
was important to have someone speak up “for
morality.” Many conservatives have so despaired of
finding someone who will return with interest the
media mockery of the standards and values that
served us for so long that they’re willing to cheer
a four-flusher’s shameless hypocrisy as the tribute
that vice pays to virtue. Newt’s a clever pol who
understands that newspaper and television reporters
and columnists are fat, easy and inviting targets.
Mitt Romney, who will never be mistaken for the
people’s choice, is nevertheless finally going on
the attack—not for Newt’s unimaginative lady-killing
but for his lack of any qualities that would make
him a president the country could be proud of. “He’s
gone from pillar to post almost like a pinball
machine,” Mr. Romney said. “From item to item, in a
way which is highly erratic. It does not suggest a
stable, thoughtful course, which is normally
associated with leadership.”
Newt revels endlessly in his favorite subject. This
is the common trait of politicians, of course, but
Newt loves to talk, and talk and talk, words
colliding crazily with every vagrant thought that
wanders into his head. He could never be trusted
with a security clearance because he babbles about
everything in an undisciplined stream of
consciousness. “I think you can write a
psychological profile of me,” he once told
interviewer Gail Sheehy, “that says I found a way to
immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to
justify whatever I wanted it to.”
This qualifies him as a terrific subject for a
newspaper interview. But for a president, not so
much.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The
Washington Times.