The Gaffe Patrol
abandons Newt
By Wesley Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
The Gaffe Patrol keeps its Nieuports, Spads and
Sopwith Camels lined up wingtip-to-wingtip just off
the runway at a secret base somewhere deep in
Shangri-La, eager to pounce on a politician whose
tongue slips. Only the valiant fly with the Gaffe
Patrol.
But not always. Mitt Romney seemed to be asking for
a visit from the Gaffe Patrol this week when he told
a cable-TV interviewer that he “wasn’t concerned
about the very poor” because they have “the safety
net,” the middle class doesn’t, and the rich don’t
need one. Taken in the context of the interview this
was unremarkable stuff. Mitt has from the start
aimed his campaign at middle-class voters, the
overtaxed and underappreciated majority.
But context, as any journalist could tell you, is
for sissies, and CNN decreed that Mitt had made “a
potential speaking gaffe.” The brave and resolute
men of the Gaffe Patrol buckled their chinstraps,
adjusted their goggles, threw a silk scarf jauntily
against the wind and waited for the phone to ring in
the ready shack.
Only this time it didn’t ring. Mitt “clarified” his
remarks and there seemed to be no damage, collateral
or otherwise. The next day, when Newt said he cared
about the “very poor” even if Mitt didn’t, there was
still no co-ordinated strafing of the Romney
campaign. Newt, no doubt puzzled by the silence in
the skies, reached for a stretch. The “safety net”
was not enough, anyway. “What the poor need,” he
said, “is a trampoline so that they can spring up.”
With Newt off to the sporting goods store in search
of a trampoline, the campaign lurched on to Las
Vegas, where The Donald, king of reality television,
waited to reveal his favorite in the race to the
Republican nomination. Would it be Newt Gingrich?
The Associated Press, the New York Times and
Politico all said so. Or would it be Mitt? Nobody
said anything about Rick Santorum or Ron Paul, or
even Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana
who was last seen in his pirogue adrift on Bayou
Bartholomew. The Drudge Report, right as usual, said
Mitt was the man.
You couldn’t blame Newt for thinking the Gaffe
Patrol was a squadron of malingerers. There was no
pursuit of Mitt earlier when Newt accused Mitt, as
governor of Massachusetts, of vetoing legislation
“paying for kosher food for seniors in nursing
homes—Holocaust survivors.” Surely, Newt thought,
this accusation would be enough to darken the skies
over Miami Beach with flights of Spads and Nieuports,
eager to avenge Mormon hypocrisy on religious
freedom. When it didn’t happen Newt glumly withdrew
the accusation.
Newt couldn’t even tempt the Gaffe Patrol to the
skies with the resurrection of the tale of the dog
on the roof. He put up an advertisement on the
Internet telling again the story of how, 25 years
ago, Mitt put the family dog Seamus, an Irish
setter, in his kennel and strapped it to the roof of
the car for a 12-hour trip to Ontario for a family
vacation. Seamus, who has long since been scouting
the heavenly meadows for mischief with Lassie and
Rin Tin Tin, survived. So did Mitt, though it was
the gravest national dog crisis since Lyndon Johnson
picked up his beagle by its ears, and animal-rights
fanatics were eager to sic a pit bull on Mitt. Newt
never put up the ad on television, probably because
he didn’t have the money to do it.
Newt is learning the painful lesson that once your
campaign begins losing altitude, nothing works. The
Gaffe Patrol rarely avenges gaffes, and never what
CNN calls “potential gaffes.” Even the Gaffe Patrol
must save fuel in these straitened times. Newt thus
feels driven to saying ever more absurd things, like
statehood for the moon (which might be “paired” for
admission with the District of Columbia), dogs on
the roof, no more kosher brisket in the Jewish
nursing homes, Mitt forging campaign alliances with
George Soros and Goldman Sachs. The absence of grace
and tact in politics accelerates. When Rick Santorum
left the campaign after the Florida primary to be
with a gravely ill daughter, Newt suggested it would
be a good time for him to drop out permanently and
endorse Newt. This absence of grace is of a piece
with his treatment of his wives and other women he
leaves wounded in his wake.
Newt can’t help himself. The ego and narcissm that
crippled a first-rate mind is the legacy of the
‘60s. The rest of us are paying now for the damage
inflicted by that dreadful decade, the greatest
gaffe of all. Alas, there was no Gaffe Patrol to
answer history.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The
Washington Times.