December 11, 2011
At last night’s debate, Gingo got into a pis*ing match with Mitt Romney over Israel/Palestine policy. Who is more macho. Who has courage? Who is timid. Gingrich’s utterly unearned sense of his own bravery, his own singular judgment, in the face of complex international issues is literally frightening. We’ve known this for a long time, but he’s rarely given us a better example of unrestrained, and ultimately galactically irresponsible hubris.
Here’s what he said: “I think sometimes it is helpful to have a president of the United States with the courage to tell the truth, just as was Ronald Reagan who went around his entire national security apparatus to call the Soviet Union an evil empire and who overruled his entire State Department in order to say, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Reagan believed the power of truth restated the world and reframed the world. I am a Reaganite, I’m proud to be a Reaganite. I will tell the truth, even if it’s at the risk of causing some confusion sometimes with the timid.” The perfectly opposite example of this is Newt Gingrich.
In 1985, he told Jane Mayer of The Wall Street Journal that he still believed that “Vietnam was the right battlefield at the right time.” Why didn’t he go? “Given everything I believe in, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over,” he allowed. But, recovering, he added, “Part of the question I had to ask myself was what difference I would have made.”
That wasn’t an appropriate question. He like all those who went to Vietnam had a role to play, an unfortunate role. Gingo would have been the same, he’d have served a role, and “made a difference.” To use the question about whether he’d have made a difference is not a question one asks when called upon to serve one’s country. It’s dissembling. It’s like a card game with a player who has exceptional sleight of hand. A principled way to avoid service is well known: conscientious objection. Gingo’s way was self-serving; dishonesty masquerading as honesty.
