Gingrich: character revealing itself

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve never liked Newt Gingrich. At all.

It’s not that I couldn’t see he’s a pretty bright guy. He is, about some things.

And it’s not just that my initial exposure to him was back when I was a liberal Democrat and predisposed to disagree with him. Nor was it his singularly distasteful name, a cross between a small amphibian and a Dr. Seuss villain.

gingrinch.jpg

No, my dislike was about something more basic and more lasting than ideology: character. And I’m not talking about Gingrich’s habit of cheating on his wives, although that hardly endeared him to me (and by the way, the story about him asking wife number one for a divorce when she was recovering from cancer surgery is apparently untrue).

The personality trait that has especially repulsed me about Gingrich is a self-serving ruthlessness that he exudes, a smallness and a lack of sincerity coupled with extreme personal arrogance.

You might say the same about our current president, minus the marital infidelities. In Obama’s case it is coupled with a certain superficial ease and charm that Gingrich lacks. But just as the more we see of Obama the more he demonstrates his flaws, the more we see of Gingrich (and by now we’ve seen way too much of him) the more he demonstrates his.

The most recent example, of course, is Gingrich’s ill-considered attack on Rep. Ryan’s budget proposal regarding Medicare. Gingrich is probably stunned by the strength of the backlash from almost all Republican quarters, but that only demonstrates his tone-deafness. Right now the Republican Party does not need a has-been politician with high negatives gratuitously trashing an intelligent and courageous proposal from a likable up-and-coming young congressman who is already one of the few Republican hopes on the horizon. It is seen as a betrayal, and rightly so.

The WSJ has been merciless to Gingrich:

Yet now [Gingrich] is trashing Mr. Ryan for thinking far more deeply about health care, and in a far more principled fashion, than Mr. Gingrich ever has. The episode reveals the Georgian’s weakness as a candidate, and especially as a potential President””to wit, his odd combination of partisan, divisive rhetoric and poll-driven policy timidity.

Gingrich was already a weak candidate before his ill-fated statement. Now he’s almost certainly a finished one: “Newt of the Four Days,” which is the length of time before his candidacy self-imploded.

The Schwarzenegger affair: Arnold and Maria just grew apart…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and then there’s the little matter of the 10-year-old out-of-wedlock child, fathered by Schwarzenegger during his affair with a long-time household employee.

There’s a feeling of deja vu here, although the details are always slightly different: powerful guy can’t keep it in his pants, no matter how lovely the wife or how fervent the vows, or how loyally she protects him. Although it’s impossible to know what’s truth and what’s a coverup, it appears in this case that Schwarzenegger’s wife Maria Shriver only recently found out about the affair, although there had been tensions between them for years. But she had stood by her husband and defended his honor and integrity during his campaign, when charges of previous gropings had surfaced.

Cheating is hardly confined to the rich and famous, although it seems to have found an especially cozy home among political men. Nor should this be any sort of surprise. Not only is it an old story, but the character traits of drive and arrogance that so often go with political ambitions, plus the prevalence of increased opportunity afforded by the political life, make it almost an inevitability. As Kissinger famously said, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” and Schwarzenegger, after all, possessed the multiple powers of the celebrity, the politician, the movie star, and the physical strongman.

This does not excuse his behavior, of course. For wife Maria Shriver, if the affair was indeed a recent revelation, the shame of her having defended him while ignorant of the truth would add to the sharpness of her feeling of betrayal. It’s often not the crime so much as the coverup, a fact Schwarzenegger ought to have known but probably ignored.

More on David Mamet, political changer

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “Jimmy J.”]

I’ve written about playwright David Mamet’s left-to-right political conversion before, but Andrew Ferguson’s new piece in the Weekly Standard updates us on some of the details, and just how far he’s come.

As conversion stories go it’s a typical tale, although Mamet is hardly a typical person. But he has many characteristics of the classic changer:

—He’d always been a fiercely independent thinker and skeptical of “received wisdom,” although previously this characteristic had not been expressed in the political realm

—He’d previously been almost entirely unacquainted with conservatives, and in fact rather politically disinterested:

It was the first time he thought about partisan politics for any sustained period.

“This was after the 2004 election,” he told me [Ferguson] in an interview last month. “I’d never met a conservative. I didn’t know what a conservative was. I didn’t know much of anything.

—When he began to question his previous beliefs, he was open to reading conservative writers and gave them a fair hearing.

—In retrospect, it seems he was conservative all along and was unaware of that fact:

“I think he has the same values today that he did before,” [Shelby] Steele said. “He’s said to me he thinks he might have always been conservative without knowing it. All that happened was, he finally found a politics that suited his values.

—Once his conversion was underway, it took on a life of its own, and it hasn’t been easy. Most changers are as shocked and reluctant as Mamet was, but they are unable to deny the evidence once it is before them, and must follow where it leads, including to self-recrimination and social ostracism:

“Forcing yourself into a new way of thinking about things is a wrenching experience. But first you have to look back and atone. You think, ”˜Oh my god, what have I done? What was I thinking?’ You realize you’ve been a co-dependent with the herd. And then, when you decide to say what you’ve discovered, out loud, you take the risk that everyone you know will look on you as a fool.”

Ferguson says that Mamet is reluctant to talk about what his conversion has cost him psychologically, or what it might cost him professionally. My guess is that he has lost old friends but gained many new ones; for example, he’s been fortunate, because of his celebrity and contacts, to have met both Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele and become friends with both of them. It also sounds as though his marriage hasn’t suffered because of his conversion, as relationships sometimes do.

Mamet says he doesn’t read blogs. It’s a pity, because I think he’d enjoy mine.

Well, at least Strauss-Kahn isn’t being accused of hypocrisy…

The New Neo Posted on by

…for his alleged sexual predation, because he’s not a conservative. He’s a socialist.

He’s also French, and the French have long been famous for ignoring (or perhaps even admiring?) the sexual peccadilloes of their randy politicians.

But the current allegations seem more serious. This isn’t about a high-class mistress—even a “well-documented affair with…a Hungarian economist and a junior colleague at the IMF,” which resulted in a 2008 apology by Strauss-Kahn, but no finding that he’d abused his power (although the woman in question indicated that he had). Nor is it about a family friend’s 20-something daughter who alleged in 2007 that he’d attacked her in 2002, although she’d never pressed charges because, “I didn’t want to be known to the end of my days as the girl who had a problem with the politician.”

If true, the type of attack that is now alleged is pretty unambiguously criminal, and involves a far more declasse victim: hotel maid. Perhaps Strauss-Kahn was showing he’s a man of the people? Whatever the truth or falsehood of the claim (which was made immediately after the offense), it does seem as though this guy has been spinning out of control for quite some time, and has only been emboldened (as perps often are) by the fact that he’s been getting away with it.

The present case is fraught with drama, not the least of which is its international nature. Strauss-Kahn almost made a successful getaway; he was pulled off an Air France flight at the last minute and taken into custody. As for the accuser, the only tidbit of news I’ve been able to glean about her is this, “The police have provided few details about the woman at the center of the case beyond saying she was 32 and an African immigrant.”

[NOTE: Reports are that, had this incident not occurred, Strauss-Kahn might have been elected France’s next president. Interesting; I had no idea the socialists were so in the ascendance in France.]

Blogging and burnout

The New Neo Posted on by

Richard Fernandez reflects on the announcement by blogger Marc Danziger (former “Armed Liberal,” in recent years at Winds of Change, and friend of mine from some years back) that Danziger is taking a break from blogging.

Fernandez writes:

Once, at the first and only time I ever sat on a panel in New York City, I described the pressure that comes with having a modest readership. “When you’ve got ten visitors a day you can say what you like. When you have ten thousand, you become very careful.” The other rule, which Marc has probably discovered, is that at ten visitors a day you don’t give a hoot whether you write that day or not. When the site gets to a certain level of traffic, that luxury disappears. You have to show up every day because you know ten thousand readers will. The only thing worse than having your own business is having a moderately successful blog.

That made me smile.

I don’t have a readership of ten thousand readers a day, but I have considerably more than ten. This blog could definitely be described as “moderately successful,” and I understand the feeling of not wanting to disappoint my readers, many of whom come here not just to read me but to talk to each other.

A very successful blog, such as Instapundit, is more like a job, and probably a fairly lucrative one at that. Although money is hardly the entire impetus that drives it, and most likely wasn’t at the blog’s inception, it can mightily reinforce the desire to continue.

But a “moderately successful” blog can never be the monetary equivalent of a job, despite the wonderful efforts of readers (thanks again, all who have donated here!) to help out as best they can. So it will always be mostly a labor of love—or perhaps of OCD.

My friend and fellow blogger Dr. Sanity weighed in on Fernandez’s comment thread with this:

I keep taking vacations from blogging, always with the thought that I might never return. After a while I come back because I feel something inside compelling me to write about what’s going on. I suppose as long as I have something to say, I will continue. I will say this: it was liberating to get rid of the sitemeter and not worry about how many people were coming to the blog.

I share Dr. Sanity’s compulsion to write; it’s what drove me to blog in the first place. I had spent spent quite a few years with lots of opinions and few people to listen to them. I realize now I was often composing blog posts (even though I’d never heard of blogs), if only in my head, and wanting to discuss them with a group of people I hadn’t yet met but assumed existed out there. So blogging, for me, has had its own substantial rewards, not the least of which has been talking with all of you, and meeting other simpatico bloggers such as Dr. Sanity herself.

I haven’t yet freed myself of the tyranny of the sitemeter, although I don’t check it all that often and I’m not ruled by it. I still write pretty much what I please, although I don’t do a lot of personal stuff about other people in my life, in order to protect my privacy and theirs.

But it’s still hard to watch that sitemeter climb (for example, in the months before the 2010 election, when traffic in general was up around the blogosphere) and then see it drop afterwards. It would be so very nice if traffic just built and built and built, instead. I know life is full of ups and downs, but a sitemeter is so—well, so graphic about showing them.

For several months now news and traffic has been relatively slow. Yes, there’s the occasional big story such as Bin Laden’s death. But that doesn’t really change the fact that energy in general is low right now for politics, and that I’ve been doing this for over (gulp!) six years.

Don’t worry, I have no plans to follow in Danziger’s footsteps and quit blogging, although I might take a few days’ vacation here and there. No biggee. But I think I understand quite well what drove him to make that decision, and I wish him the best.

Social conservatives and redemption

The New Neo Posted on by

This Time article by Alex Altland about the Daniels candidacy and marital history contains the following curious passage [emphasis mine]:

In his rare comments about the couple’s reconciliation, Daniels has said, “If you like happy endings, you’ll love our story.” Indeed, although it may not mollify social conservatives who expect their presidential candidates to lead impossibly spotless private lives.

Social conservatives—who often, although not always, are deeply religious—are a group about whom much nonsense has been spouted. Whether the spouters believe what they themselves are saying I really don’t know, but the notion that social conservatives expect their candidates “to lead impossibly spotless private lives” is an absurdity.

First of all, it is possible to lead a fairly spotless private life. But secondly and much more importantly and relevantly, that’s not the demand that either fundamentalist and/or evangelical and/or devout Christians (or orthodox Jews, for that matter, who trend towards conservatism compared to their reform or secular fellows) make of their candidates or of their fellow men and women.

Ever hear of the idea of redemption, reform, repentance, forgiveness, and all that? It’s a rather powerful theme in religious thought, to say the least.

What is not admired or accepted is the hypocrisy of holding oneself out as one thing but practicing another. But sinners who return to the fold (Cheri Daniels, perhaps) and those who lovingly accept them back (Mitch Daniels, it appears) usually are accepted, understood, and even admired, as well as celebrated in song:

Each age gets the Tudors it deserves

The New Neo Posted on by

During my recent bout with infirmity, I dusted off some old videotapes of the 1970 BBC series “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” and watched it.

I had fond memories of it from my original viewing over forty years ago, and I was not disappointed. Yes, the production is fairly primitive, looking mostly like a play with cheap sets, although the costumes are pretty good. But the scripts and the acting are excellent (I’ve seen three of the six episodes so far), really quite superb. Subtle and yet clear, highly intelligent, and for the most part historically accurate.

The actors even resemble their historic predecessors—case in point, the real Henry and Keith Michell, who plays him in the series:

henry8.jpg

henry8michell.jpg

Or the real Archbishop Cranmer and Bernard Hepton, who plays him in the series:

cranmer.jpg

heptoncranmer.jpg

I appreciate that sort of attention to detail.

Sex is in there of course, and violence, (this is Henry VIII, after all), but it’s suggested rather than shown graphically. Although the episodes are long, they move along rather nicely to their already-known and usually grisly conclusions. Death was a constant companion in those days, sometimes of infants and young women in childbirth, and often of diseases and infections that today would be child’s play, as well as that all-too-frequent cause: execution for treason, often on trumped-up charges. The nobility who were involved in power plays often met violent ends.

Interested in other depictions of the same period, I rented a much more recent depiction of the same period, “The Tudors.” It was a popular Canadian/Irish series that aired in 2007-2010 on Showtime, and I was curious, despite the trepidation I felt on looking at the photos on the cover of the DVD:

tudors.jpg

Who was this smoldering (and non-redheaded) rebel without a cause, and all those bosomy torsos behind him (as opposed to the flattening and binding effect of real Tudor fashion)? And take a look at the images generated by a Google search for “The Tudors.” But I gave it a chance anyway; how bad could it be?

Plenty bad, it turns out. I could only take about twenty minutes of watching. Mainly scenes of simulated and unconvincing sex, and a script so chaotic and unclear that most of the time the viewer has no idea who it is he/she is watching doing what. Soft-core porn has its place, I suppose, but that’s not what I signed up for.

But the worst part of all was the character of Henry. Entirely unconvincing in conveying the magnitude of the historical figure—both good and bad—this guy was just an angry punk trying (and, IMHO opinion, failing) to be sexy, despite all the bare-ass flailing.

It strikes me that the difference between the two series is no accident whatsoever. Scripts and productions are tailored to the times, and the times they have a-changed.

Romneycare: it’s not the offense…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it’s the coverup.

The consensus is that Romney cannot possibly have it both ways. Either Romneycare and Obamacare are both a mistake or they are both okay, because the similarities between them are too great.

Romney’s main argument for the Massachusetts plan enacted during his governorship vs. Obamacare is that states are allowed to do many things (including having an individual mandate) that the federal government is forbidden. That actually is a logical point, but it’s one that doesn’t mean a whole lot to too many people, and in any case it avoids the very real problems Massachusetts has with its current health insurance system.

As the Republican governor of a mega-liberal state, Romney was in the position of having to work with a legislature and appeal to a constituency that was highly to the left of him. That surely must have been a factor, but he doesn’t seem to be exploiting that aspect of his history, probably because it would make him sound weak.

No doubt about it, he’s in a pickle, one that wouldn’t be so big a deal had Obamacare not become a major issue for 2012. Romney has the advantage of name recognition and executive experience. But he may be unable to get around the contradiction inherent in his spirited defense of his own record and his equally spirited condemnation of Obamacare.

It’s too bad, because his proposal for fixing Obamacare sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Food poisoning

The New Neo Posted on by

Perhaps I should have known better than to eat at IHOP, a place I hadn’t visited in years.

I ordered an omelet with cheese and spinach. Sounds healthful enough. And it was rather tasty, too. Came with mediocre hash browns of which I only ate the brown crusty part, and a couple of pancakes on which I poured some (fake) maple syrup and ate maybe two/thirds of a single one.

In addition, I had a bite of sausage link. Didn’t much like it, and didn’t have any more. And that was it.

A fairly modest dinner. But a couple of hours later…well, I’ll be merciful and spare you the details, except to say this is my third day of tremors in the GI force field, along with more-than-usual tiredness.

The good news is that I might lose a pound or two. The bad news is that I will most likely gain it right back. In the meantime, my energy level is lower than usual, and talk of food in general doesn’t evoke the same enthusiasm in me that it usually does. It’s pretty much been toast and rice lately.

The body’s normal workings are a wonderful thing that we often take for granted until they go awry. Fortunately, this latest disruption should be very temporary. I’m already feeling a great deal better than I did at first. Any home remedies of yours to share, to hasten along the recovery?

The Mitch Daniels marriage[s]: who cares?

The New Neo Posted on by

I can’t imagine why anyone would think that Mitch Daniels’s unusual marital history would be a problem with the electorate.

The story is that his wife left him and married another man in the 90s, leaving him to raise his four daughters (then ages 8-14) alone, and then returned three years later and they remarried. As Daniels himself told a reporter in 2004:

If you like happy endings, you’ll love our story. Love and the love of children overcame any problems.

I’m not so sure that’s all there is to it—it rarely is the whole story—but that’s certainly the way it reads. The prodigal wife returns to the noble husband, sadder and wiser. It sounds as though the only fault was hers, and she’s not running, and if he forgave her, who are we to hold it against either of them?

I have to say that for the most part first ladies don’t concern me, except for such highly superficial items as their fashion sense and a few random utterances. It’s not that I don’t have opinions, but they just don’t seem of great import to me compared to my opinions about the POTUS himself (and so far, it’s always been a himself rather than a herself). I doubt Mrs. Daniels will be any different, although I’d predict the press will try to rake the couple over the coals if Daniels chooses to run.