Uncivil Warrior in South Carolina

In the American state of South Carolina on Saturday, a wily old hand in dirty conservative politics, one Newt Gingrich, staged a surprising surge in voter popularity to win a primary election in the current presidential election campaign. Gingrich is perhaps best known to the liberal world for his carping attack dog press applied to Bill Clinton while that president was dealing all too publicly with his well known peccadillo with a young White House intern, the infamous Monica Lewinsky. Your correspondent, chronically only dimly aware of the actualities of the political swirl, was amazed at the time that Newt (I mean, with a name like that how can one defer to the more classical Gingrich?) was at the very same time in the process of dumping his first wife for the lover he'd transferred his passions to. Well, we know that life is a dynamic mix - what of it? Well, it simply seemed craven at the time because, the story went, his wife was at that very time battling for her life with cancer.

This interpretation was wrong, a consequence of dim participation in the newstream of the time. Newt's second wife has recently re-introduced the cagey pol's marital history in a series of interviews with the press. It turns out that it was his first wife who was pestered with divorce proceedings while recovering from surgery long before the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. Marianne Gingrich, Mrs. Newt 2.0, now reveals that while Newt was flogging Bill Clinton with his own penis in public, he was at the same time carrying on an affair with his congressional aide. The recent revelations include the assertion that Newt sought an "open marriage" with MrsN 2.0, an invitation that was declined. Eventually the couple worked out their differences, divorcing one another, freeing Newt to engage Mrs. Newt 3.0 "because she doesn't care what I do". Newt gained standing ovations in a recent televised debate by attacking the moderator who opened the debate by querying Newt about his marital behavior. Newt attacked back, "appaled" that the moderator "would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that." The audience loved it. They carried their love all the way to the polls, where the man is reported to have won by an astounding 12% margin.

Is any of this germane?, one wondered aloud. Who really cares about what goes on between the sheets behind closed doors? The answer to this, given by an astute and avid observer of American politics, is that it is entirely germane. "The man is a liar and a cheat and has no qualms about hypocritically attacking from a holier-than-thou soapbox." Fair enough. Surely, he's a cheat - that's admitted. Trying to make sense of the domestic squabble being played out by proxy in the press, it's clear that somebody is lying about Newt's marital conduct. Perhaps most telling is that the man, once the most powerful pol in the dissenting party (a Republican Speaker in the Clinton era), earned the honor of being the first House Speaker in history to be found guilty of ethics violation by the House Ethics Committee in 1997.

So it is germane: the man is professionally unethical. He is a liar. He is a cheat. He has assiduously worked to promote the Newt agenda through a collection of lobbying and media enterprises that earned at the rate of $10M/year (€7.7M) between 2001-2010. In other words, he began working both sides of the street after losing prominence in his party. He is a warrior in a rather uncivil war for the operational attention of the American electorate.

Bombardment of Fort Sumter by Currier & Ives (1837–1885).

Bombardment of Fort Sumter by Currier & Ives (1837–1885).

This is the man the voters of South Carolina overwhelmingly endorsed on Saturday as their choice for Leader of the Free World. South Carolina is similar in size and population to Ireland and ranks in the bottom 5% of US states in terms of per capita GDP. Their historical yearning for political change is embedded in American history: the US Civil War was begun as an attack by South Carolina militia on federal troops stationed at the Charleston harbor fortification Fort Sumter. Many of us can empathize with a desire to change the political and economic landscape. We can only hope, however, that the challenge issued by the voters of the Palmetto State is ultimately as successful as that challenge ordered by Colonel Chestnut in the formative moment of the Confederate States of America.