Luckily, the ongoing fade of Newt Gingrich has lessened the chance of a race with Obama, a man wholly unlike him in background and presence, but too much alike in much else. Both see themselves as creatures of destiny, worship at the shrine of their own incandescence, and compare themselves freely to all the great men of the past.
Together, they make up the Axis of Egos, a pair of swelled heads so remarkably addled that they make most of their rivals seem rational.
The Atlantic Wire caught Gingrich comparing himself to Charles de Gaulle, Ronald Reagan, Henry Clay, and Margaret Thatcher and the Duke of Wellington, among other notables.
A perennial favorite is Winston S. Churchill, the greatest man of the 20th century. “I wish he would get over himself,” said the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley, after Gingrich debated in Iowa.
“He compared himself to Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, FDR. That was only in the first half,” Riley said.
When he failed to qualify to get on the ballot for the primary in the state of Virginia, Gingrich likened the blow to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. What’s a few battleships, against his own fortunes?
“Over himself?” It seems not.
In stylistic terms, President Obama — cool, calm and super-collected — seems Gingrich’s polar opposite, but his detached and laid-back persona may mask an ego still more grandiose.
Running for president after two years in the Senate, he was called (by his staff) the ‘black Jesus’ and promised to slow down and reverse the rise of the oceans, disarm the aggressors by the force of sweet reason, and bring peace (if not joy) to the world.
The fact that he has made no headway in either did not dent his pride in his lack of accomplishment: “I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president, with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R. and Lincoln, just in terms of what we’ve gotten done,” he said to CBS News’ Steve Kroft on “60 Minutes”.
What he got done was increase the national debt, preside over 9 percent unemployment, fail to “engage” Iran and/or North Korea, and turn what he himself had suggested was victory into a potential defeat in Iraq.
As an ad made by the GOP group “Crossroads” noted, this made him our fourth-greatest president, ahead of such clunkers as Reagan and Kennedy and even George Washington, none of whom managed to triple the deficit, or force a huge, costly bill down the throats of the people, which his party now cannot mention in public, and, which may be undone by the courts in the spring.
Both men seek recognition for doing great things, but grandiosity gets in the way of their grand aspirations, as it is impossible ever to learn from experience, if you believe that you never can fail.
Lincoln failed in his first years of war leadership, but then found the right generals. Kennedy failed in the Bay of Pigs and his first meeting with Khrushchev, but redeemed himself later.
Bush 43 failed in the first years of the Iraq occupation, and then altered course with the Surge. On a lesser scale, Bill Clinton realized he had hit a wall with the 1994 midterms, and triangulated himself into his re-election.
Common to all of these things was the recognition of failure, and the sober attempt to reverse past misjudgments. But Obama and Gingrich blame all of their woes on the malfeasance of others.
Self-awareness is something the Axis of Egos knows not.
Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to TheWeekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
