Friday, December 16, 2011

Newtspotting

One of the things that you pick up when you read about successful politicians is that many of them really aren't like normal people; their tolerance for the mundane tasks of electioneering sets them apart. Think of George H.W. Bush writing endless thank you notes and making every fundraising call his staff could give him, as documented so well by Richard Ben Cramer in What It Takes; think of Bill Clinton working rope lines until they had to drag him away; think of George W. Bush sitting around drinking until his father became president...okay, it doesn't always work that way. Which gets us to the superhuman electioneering capacity of Newt Gingrich, on his way home for a three-day weekend break from the grueling campaign trail:
He spent nearly 30 minutes shaking hands — across the Missouri River from Iowa, in Nebraska — as he prepared to fly home
Nearly 30 minutes. I suppose when you're Churchill, Lincoln, Reagan, and de Gaulle wrapped up into one, that's a major surrender to the process. Just think home many ways he could have fundamentally changed the world if he had that almost half hour back.

6 comments:

  1. 23 years ago, Dan Quayle had a similar observation about himself. I suspect it would have made headlines at the time, but it got swallowed by the more startling "You're no Jack Kennedy."

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  2. Newt's coming at the nomination the way a frat boy comes at grades -- he'll take 'em, but he'll be damned if he's going to work for them.

    BMOC. Speaker. What's the diff?

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  3. Wow, and I thought I was snarky about Gingrich. Well said, though.

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  4. Imagine an alternate universe where we are saying, "well, he's no Newt." I made myself shiver.

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  5. Hey, Newt could tap Martha Coakley for VP and form a dream ticket. They'd be unstoppable!

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  6. Indeed Thomas, you can't stop something that is already at rest.

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