Newt and the most recent future ex-Mrs. Gingrich

Bill Clinton cheated, stayed married, and wagged a finger at his critics as he was impeached; Newt cheated, ruined two marriages, demanded an “open marriage” from his second wife (who had been a mistress), waggled his jowls at CNN correspondent John King – thereby, according to Fox News analyst Keith Ablow, displaying a set of traits best described as “presidential.”

Assessing “what Mr. Gingrich’s personal history actually means for those of us who want to right the economy, see our neighbors and friends go back to work, promote freedom here and abroad and defeat the growing threat posed by Iran and other evil regimes,” Dr. Ablow, a psychiatrist who works as a commentator for Fox News, offered this snarky (but apparently serious) analysis:

 1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

4) Two women—Mr. Gingrich’s first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation.

Conclusion: I can only hope Mr. Gingrich will be as direct and unsparing with the Congress, the American people and our allies. If this nation must now move with conviction in the direction of its heart, Newt Gingrich is obviously no stranger to that journey.

All of this is derived from subjective speculation regarding the motives of people Dr. Ablow has never met and with whom he has never spoken. Significantly, Ablow was willing to ignore a critically important objective fact regarding an immensely important matter of public policy. He insists that “Mr. Gingrich’s married life, including his history of infidelity does not mean … that Mr. Gingrich would be unfaithful to the United States of America or the Constitution of the United States.”

In fact, Gingrich has demonstrated himself incapable of obeying the terms of a solemn oath. That behavior can only be described in terms of a clinical compulsion – yet Dr. Ablow – whose professional credibility is apparently on a par with that of Dr. Nick Riviera from The Simpsons – wants to assure the Fox News audience that they can trust the largely unaccountable power of the modern presidency to a compulsive oath-breaker.

Fox News’s charlatan psychiatrist was hardly the first to depict Gingrich’s adulteries – in which he treated his wife of the moment with sociopathic cruelty and dismissiveness – as “a mark of character.”

During his January 19 broadcast, the oft-married Rush Limbaugh offered this reaction:

Now, there’s an accusation out there that Newt wanted an open marriage, just like Bill and Hillary.  And, in fact, Newt even had the politeness to ask permission for it.  Do you think Bill ever did that?… I got a great note from a friend of mine.  “So Newt wanted an open marriage.  BFD. At least he asked his wife for permission instead of cheating on her.  That’s a mark of character, in my book.  Newt’s a victim.  We all are.  Ours is the horniest generation.  We were soldiers in the sex revolution.…. Newt’s slogan ought to be, ‘Hell, yes, I wanted it.’”

Clinton’s adulterous behavior in the Oval Office led to impeachment (a sanction that should have been imposed for any of a dozen of his serious crimes against the Constitution). Gingrich, on the other hand, has paid no price of any kind for his behavior, and has granted himself absolution on the most generous terms imaginable – beginning with the fact that he refuses even to name the offense for what it was.

“There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate,” he said in a 2011 Christian Broadcasting Network interview.

On this construction, Newt’s shameless extra-marital sexual exploits – which began early in his first marriage, and included a repulsive episode in which he visited his ailing first wife in the hospital to press divorce terms while she was recovering from exploratory cancer surgery – were things that “happened” to him because he was just working too hard on behalf of the country he loves so dearly.

This sense of victimhood and entitlement was displayed in Gingrich’s theatrical outburst of “righteous” indignation toward John King during the CNN debate – and that moment of Clintonian sanctimony earned a raucous ovation from most of the pious Republicans in the audience, and plaudits from pundits across the political spectrum.
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