If Newt Gingrich were not Newt Gingrich—if he were able to step back and analyze the collapse of his campaign at arm’s length—he would likely come up with a dramatic historical parallel for the unprecedented staff upheaval this week which has destroyed his hopes of attaining the presidential nomination and more. For those who are not history majors, a different comparison seems more apt—the first lines of David Mamet’s underrated “Spartan,” where a gunnery sergeant questions an out-of-breath Delta Force recruit: “You had your whole life to prepare for this moment. Why aren’t you ready?”
The Greek tragedian element of Gingrich’s downfall is beginning to become common knowledge, after being a behind-the-scenes problem for months—a problem that some of Gingrich’s closest advisors had warned of even before the stuttering inception of his campaign operation, even before the emails comparing the operation’s internal mood to scenes from “Downfall.”
Throughout his career, Gingrich has been dogged by his relationships with the opposite sex: he loves women, though not with the slovenly charm of his foe from the 1990s, Bill Clinton. The mistakes and arguments of his past haunted him, and he chose from the first moment to make his third marriage, to Callista, a union on different terms. He converted for her. He bowed to her wishes. She became his closest advisor and confidant. She accompanied him everywhere, and he made her word essential within every conversation. He was not about to break another relationship—on every topic, no matter how small, she would have a say.
Yet this was, in practice, an act of supreme overcompensation for the excesses of Gingrich’s past. His wife’s tendency to long for a more conventionally political life of jets, black tie dinners, and the podium speeches—one where promises of cruises on the Mediterranean and promises not to miss performances at the Basilica take primacy over the necessity of grassroots campaigning—overruled the advice from the cadre of longtime political consultants, experienced in campaign operations, who pushed Gingrich to work the phones and the handshake lines.
A line from Politico’s coverage of Gingrich’s operational collapse sticks out: “Sometimes the smartest guy in the room thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room.” Gingrich is an impressively brilliant man in person, with a vast IQ and a gift for facts, dates and detail matched only by the most skilled professional play-by-play callers. But this does not equip him with the tools to run his campaign any more than it equips him with the knowledge of how to fix your car. In deferring to his wife, Gingrich overruled his political advisors again and again, to the point they no longer took him or his spouse seriously when it came to having what it took to campaign. The irony of an ardent futurist failing to predict and adapt to such an obvious problem is not lost on those close to him.
Expect Gingrich to overperform in next week’s presidential debate in New Hampshire. The expectations are low, and he’s likely to seize the moment and the stage because that’s what he excels at: the talking, the debating. It comes easily for him, which is not true of so many other politicians. But now, he is reduced to only being a “debate candidate”—the talking on the dais is all he has, while backstage, as the saying goes, “nothing’s plugged in.”
When Gingrich chose to sit down to talk and debate with a group of prominent bloggers and online activists of national stature several months ago, he gave all the appearances of being ready for the task ahead. But while presidents do a lot of talking, and some debating, what they really have to do is run things—to assemble teams of people to make their ideas a reality.
Gingrich attempted to do this for years—assembling Gingrich, Inc., the vast network of donors and operations funding his branded think tank centers for policy analysis and conservative solutions advocacy. But as impressive as he can be intellectually, Gingrich has proven time and again to be a terrible manager. He proved it as Speaker of the House, inciting personalities against each other when unity was needed, and he has proved it again as a candidate. The devastating effect on the range of organizations he has built has yet to be felt—but the next fundraising effort with his signature, even after the campaign is folded, is likely to fall flat with the donor base that once believed in him.
What shouldn’t be lost in all this, though, is the value of many of Gingrich’s ideas. There is a good deal of Gingrich’s approach to policy debates which is worth keeping, and that many younger conservatives should heed. Professors don’t make great business owners, and business owners don’t make great professors, and failing as a manager is not failing as a thinker. There are still things to learn from Gingrich, and the sooner he can banish the idea of the presidency from his head and assume his proper role within the political movement—if it still can be assumed at all—the better it is for him and for the conservative cause he loves.
Benjamin Domenech ([email protected]) is a research fellow at the Heartland Institute and co-host of the award-winning Coffee & Markets.
