Berl Falbaum
What if I told you that Brutus didn’t think that Caesar was such a bad guy?
Or that the Capulets were reconsidering accepting Romeo as a potential beau for Juliet.
Or that the McCoys were planning to ask the Hatfields to come from Virginia for a backyard picnic at their home in Kentucky.
You would be right in concluding that I have gone off the deep end. But I do want to address in this column a political event that went mostly unnoticed but is as difficult to grasp at the situations I described above.
If news, as defined by professionals in journalism, is the unusual, the unique, then the story I discuss here should have been on the front pages of every newspaper in the country and the lead on TV news stations.
So here goes. I thought I would raise the issue with a one-question quiz. No peeking down the column. You are on the honor system.
Who wrote the following on a blog?
“The Biden team had one of the best first-term, off-year elections in history. They are not to be repudiated.”
No, it was not Jill Biden. It was not Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden’s press secretary.
Nor was it someone in the Biden administration using a pseudonym for a cover.
Give up? It was none other than Newton Leroy Gingrich. No, there is no one with that name in the White House communications department.
It is the Newton Leroy Gingrich (commonly known as Newt) who was the 50th speaker of the House of Representative between 1995-99. Yes, yes, that guy.
The guy who attacked Democrats like a rabid pit bull and thought that calling them “scum” was a compliment. He was the Attila the Hun of politics although I don’t want to tarnish Attila’s reputation with that comparison.
Gingrich’s claim to fame is that he is generally held responsible --- or given credit, depending on your point of view --- for creating the venomous political environment in which anything is fair game, including questioning the parentage of opponents.
Yes, he is also the one who went after Bill Clinton for his illicit affair with Monica Lewinsky while playing hanky-panky himself and doing so at the same time.
His political action committee once distributed about 100 words that were to be used when talking about Democrats. These included: “traitor, shallow, greed, pathetic, sick,” etc.
Other words less offensive such as “corrupt, obsolete, permissive attitude, destructive” could be used on Valentine’s Day.
But the summary of his blog cited above was not all he said about the Biden administration.
He warned Republicans to quit underestimating Biden, and that “hostility to the Biden administration on our terms tends to blind us to just how effective Biden has been on his terms.”
And there was more. He described as “petty” the focus on Biden’s speech difficulties, “sometimes strange behavior, clear lapses of memory, and other personal flaws.” He said Biden “has been more successful than we [Republicans] have been willing to credit.”
He compared Biden to Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower, writing “they preferred to be underestimated, wanting people to think of them as pleasant, but not dangerous.” Biden, he offered, “has achieved something similar.”
He also praised Biden’s Ukraine strategy, applauding him for how he has handled the war.
He pleaded with Republicans to examine what worked and what did not work in 2020 and 2022 [election years], because “inevitably” they will face Biden again in 2024.
As I read about Gingrich’s conversion, I concluded that he must have swallowed some of Dr. Jekyll’s serum. He makes Benedict Arnold look like a loyalist.
The question is, “Why?”
He turned 79 in the summer so maybe AARP Magazine is planning a profile on him and he wants to look a little conciliatory.
Maybe, like some of Hawthorne’s characters, he feels a little guilty. Also, Raskolnikov in “Crime and Punishment” was troubled by his deed, but then he wielded an ax to kill an aging corrupt pawnbroker.
Maybe, digging deep into psychology, he wants to stick it to Trump by commending Biden because he didn’t get an invitation to Mar-a-Lago for the holidays.
Or perhaps, Newt, who represented Georgia in the House, was embarrassed for Georgia by the candidacy of Herschel Walker for the U.S. Senate and wanted to help rehabilitate the state’s reputation.
While the “New Newt” kept me up nights wondering why, it is not often that we have the opportunity to analyze such an intriguing political metamorphosis. This story requires in-depth research and analysis and I hope the experts get to work.
Whatever the reason, we should be grateful because there is so little in our politics that brings smiles to our faces. Thank you, Newt.
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Berl Falbaum is a veteran political columnist and author of 12 books.
