The Mud Slinger Gets Slung

Ruth MarcusNationofChange / Op-EdPublished: Sunday 22 January 2012
“Are news organizations letting a vengeful Marianne Gingrich exploit Newt’s moment, or are they performing a public service?”
Newt Gingrich Blames Media for a Mess He Created

“By de­f­i­n­i­tion, if you run for pres­i­dent, any­thing is on the table. Ask Grover Cleve­land. Ask An­drew Jack­son. Any­thing is on the table. I ac­cept that, but I don’t have to par­tic­i­pate in the con­ver­sa­tion.”

That was Newt Gin­grich, in May, when I asked him about whether in­tru­sion into can­di­dates’ per­sonal lives had gone too far. At the time, Gin­grich’s biggest headache was his Tiffany shop­ping habit, but Gin­grich ob­vi­ously had is­sues of sex­ual mis­con­duct on his mind as well: Cleve­land was as­sailed for his out-of-wed­lock child, Jack­son over a pos­si­bly big­a­mous mar­riage.

And I thought Gin­grich had it about right: When you run for pres­i­dent, you open your­self to the kind of search­ing scrutiny that a fin­ger-point­ing, voice-raised Gin­grich con­demned at Thurs­day night’s de­bate.

“I think the de­struc­tive, vi­cious, neg­a­tive na­ture of much of the news media makes it harder to gov­ern this coun­try, harder to at­tract de­cent peo­ple to run for pub­lic of­fice, and I am ap­palled that you would begin a pres­i­den­tial de­bate on a topic like that,” Gin­grich told CNN’s John King.

Gin­grich, de­nounc­ing the re­ports from his sec­ond ex-wife as “trash” and “false,” con­tin­ued. “Every per­son in here has had some­one close to them go through painful things,” he said, to wild cheer­ing from the au­di­ence. “To take an ex-wife and make it, two days be­fore the [South Car­olina] pri­mary, a sig­nif­i­cant ques­tion in a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign is as close to de­spi­ca­ble as any­thing I can imag­ine.”

And then, to even wilder cheer­ing, the in­evitable lib­eral media at­tack. “I am tired,” Gin­grich pro­claimed, “of the elite media pro­tect­ing Barack Obama by at­tack­ing Re­pub­li­cans.”

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Let’s dis­pense, first, with Gin­grich’s bias point: It plays great, but it’s bogus. The “elite” media love a juicy story, all the bet­ter if it’s cap­tured on cam­era, and its pur­suit of such tales knows no par­ti­san bounds. To those who com­plain about lib­eral media bias, think back to the crazed scrum of re­porters throng­ing then-can­di­date Bill Clin­ton when the Gen­nifer Flow­ers story first emerged on the eve of the New Hamp­shire pri­mary.

Tell me, in the 20-20 hind­sight of Mon­ica Lewin­sky, were vot­ers bet­ter or worse off for hav­ing had the chance to as­sess that “tabloid trash” be­fore Clin­ton was elected?


This gets to the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion of the rel­e­vance of politi­cians’ per­sonal lives. If you run for pres­i­dent, every­thing, as Gin­grich said, is on the table, but should it be?

I have to admit to a cer­tain queasi­ness on see­ing the ABC “Night­line” in­ter­view with video of Mar­i­anne Gin­grich. “It was oc­cur­ring in my bed­room in our apart­ment in Wash­ing­ton,” she re­called. “And he al­ways called me at night, and he al­ways ended with ‘I love you,’ while she was there lis­ten­ing . . . in my home.” This is pow­er­ful, un­com­fort­able stuff. The man does have grand­chil­dren.

It’s un­for­tu­nate that the story broke so close to a crit­i­cal pri­mary. I might not have led the de­bate with the topic, as CNN did, but it also could not be avoided. King sim­ply asked Gin­grich if he wanted to ad­dress that par­tic­u­lar ele­phant, and the ques­tion may have helped Gin­grich more than hurt him.

None of us got into jour­nal­ism to ques­tion ex-wives or poke into the in­ti­mate de­tails of politi­cians’ failed mar­riages. Are news or­ga­ni­za­tions let­ting a venge­ful Mar­i­anne Gin­grich ex­ploit Newt’s mo­ment, or are they per­form­ing a pub­lic ser­vice?

Both, prob­a­bly. Gin­grich’s past pri­vate con­duct may not mat­ter to some vot­ers, ei­ther be­cause they do not con­sider it rel­e­vant to his fu­ture job per­for­mance or be­cause they ac­cept that he has changed for the bet­ter.

Oth­ers may con­sider it dis­qual­i­fy­ing or, if not dis­qual­i­fy­ing, dis­turb­ing. You don’t have to be an evan­gel­i­cal voter to lis­ten to Mar­i­anne Gin­grich de­scribe how her hus­band asked for a di­vorce on the tele­phone to cringe about such cal­lous self-ab­sorp­tion.

We have learned that char­ac­ter mat­ters in politi­cians, in pres­i­dents most of all. And char­ac­ter re­veals it­self in a politi­cian’s per­sonal life. Gin­grich’s reck­less lack of dis­ci­pline, his grandiose sense of en­ti­tle­ment (He said, “Yes, but you want me all to your­self. Cal­lista doesn’t care what I do,” Mar­i­anne Gin­grich re­called her then-hus­band say­ing of his af­fair) — all of these are traits that strad­dle the bound­ary be­tween per­sonal and po­lit­i­cal.

Which is why, as Gin­grich said, every­thing is on the table. That his is so crowded with un­ap­pe­tiz­ing morsels is his doing, not the fault of those who re­port on them.