Ask Republicans to explain the appeal of nominating Newt
Gingrich to take on President Obama and it won’t be long before
you’re reminded of the former House speaker’s intellectual and
rhetorical acumen. Indeed, some Republicans become downright giddy
when speaking about the prospect of Gingrich debating Obama.
It’s hard to blame them. After a decade of inarticulate
and reticent standard bearers, and amid a field of much the same,
Republicans see in Gingrich a learned and eloquent debater able and
unafraid to take it directly to the supposedly golden-tongued
Orator-in-Chief.
Gingrich, many Republicans believe, would make the
presidential debates something to look forward to for the first
time since Reagan.
Gingrich knows that his ability to talk is his chief asset
and has invited Obama to debate him in seven three-hour
Lincoln-Douglas-style debates should he secure the Republican
nomination. “I will concede in advance that he can use a
teleprompter,” Gingrich said mockingly of Obama when he proposed
the debates in early December.
But before Republicans conclude that as their nominee
Gingrich would be able to debate his way to the Oval Office, they
should take a moment to remember what happened the last time Obama
squared off against a smart and eloquent, but bombastic, pompous
and egomaniacal Republican.
Consider the following analysis.
“[He] was not lacking in confidence.… There was no doubt
the man could talk. At the drop of a hat [he] could deliver a
grammatically flawless disquisition on virtually any topic. On the
stump, he could wind himself up into a fiery intensity, his body
rocking, his brow running with sweat, his fingers jabbing the air,
his high-pitched voice trembling with emotion as he called the
faithful to do battle against the forces of evil.
“Unfortunately for him, neither his intellect nor his
eloquence could overcome certain defects as a candidate. Unlike
most politicians, for example, [he] made no effort to conceal what
he clearly considered to be his moral and intellectual
superiority.…
Moreover, [his] self-assuredness disabled in him the
instincts for self-censorship that allow most people to navigate
the world without getting into constant fistfights. [He] said
whatever popped into his mind, and with dogged logic would follow
over a cliff just about any idea that came to him.
These words describe almost perfectly the intellectual and
rhetorical bearing and style of Newt Gingrich. Only they weren’t
written about Gingrich. They are Barack Obama’s words — from
The Audacity of Hope — about former Ambassador Alan
Keyes, Obama’s Republican opponent in the 2004 election for
Illinois’ open Senate seat.
I was struck by two things as I recently watched old
footage of the 2004 Obama-Keyes debates. First, Keyes comes across
as a better debater than Obama. He seems more polished, smarter,
and more confident than Obama. Keyes’ verbal fluency makes Obama’s
use of verbal fillers and stutters, his repeated words and
incomplete and restarted sentences, all the more
noticeable.
The second thing I noticed were the striking similarities
between Keyes and Gingrich. Keyes is more theatrical than Gingrich,
while Gingrich is more overtly egoistic and self-reverential. (He
has at various moments called himself “the most serious, systematic
revolutionary of modern times” and a “definer of
civilization.”)
But the two share many characteristics. For one thing,
they both hold Ph.D.s (Keyes in government, Gingrich in history).
Perhaps this helps explain why both Keyes and Gingrich have a
tendency to talk down to opponents and debate moderators. Keyes was
antagonistic toward the Illinois journalists who moderated the
Senate debates, cutting off questioners and reacting harshly when
moderators told him his time was up.
In a debate in which the candidates got to ask one other
questions, Obama asked Keyes about Keyes’ past endorsement of
repeal of the 17th Amendment. Keyes replied dismissively, “I think
that the question actually illustrates the ignorance that I’ve
noticed of your understanding of the American Constitution and its
background,” before launching into a history lesson of the
Constitution.
The remark — and the condescension with which it was
delivered — may have pleased conservatives. But it probably didn’t
play well to moderates in Peoria.
Gingrich received attention in the first few Republican
presidential debates by attacking debate moderators. He lambasted
one for asking “gotcha questions” and called another’s request to
sum up his position on healthcare reform in 30 seconds
“absurd.”
Such combativeness has made Gingrich look tough against a
media that so many conservatives loathe. But it may not play as
well with moderate and independent voters in a general
election.
Keyes and Gingrich both use unnecessarily inflammatory
language and sometimes raise irrelevant issues just to make a
point. Keyes labeled homosexuals “self-hedonists,” and insisted
that adoptions by gay couples would result in incest. He accused
Obama of embracing a “slave-holders” position on abortion and
labeled Obama a “hardcore, academic Marxist.” Keyes even suggested
that Obama was not really African American because he is not a
descendant of slaves and declared that “Christ would not vote for
Barack Obama.”
These are the types of things conservative activists tell
their supporters in fundraising letters. They have no place in
political debates before audiences of voters who are just getting
to know the candidates.
Gingrich has been similarly divisive, suggesting that
Obama is a “Saul Alinsky radical,” and that the Palestinians are an
“invented” people. Off the debate stage, Gingrich has called Obama
the “food stamp president” who may hold a “Kenyan anti-colonial”
worldview and suggested that the liberal agenda is “as great a
threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.” He even
accused Obama’s first Supreme Court appointee, Sonia Sotomayor, the
first Hispanic Justice, of being a “racist.”
Such comments have helped Gingrich stay in the news and
gain Twitter followers, but they don’t make him appear
presidential.
Both Keyes and Gingrich have embraced off-the-wall
positions and picked curious fights with Republicans. In the 2004
campaign, Keyes came out in support of reparations in the form of a
suspension of the income tax for all blacks with slave
ancestry.
Gingrich’s heterodoxies are too numerous to list, and
include past support for legislative action to combat global
warming and more recently referring to Paul Ryan’s entitlement
reform plan as “right-wing social engineering.”
I don’t mean to suggest that Keyes and Gingrich are
equally plausible as candidates. Keyes was a last-minute candidate
who had never held elected office, never lived in Illinois and had
virtually no chance of beating Obama.
Gingrich spent 20 years in the House of Representatives,
rising to the speakership. He helped engineer the Contract with
America and the first Republican takeover of the House in 40
years.
Perhaps most important, Keyes faced a rising State Senator
Obama, while Gingrich would do battle against a diminished
President Obama.
But at their core, Keyes and Gingrich are the same: both
seem more interested in rhetorical point-scoring and intellectual
exhibitionism than in winning elections or governing.
Keyes was quite effective in one respect. “[Keyes got]
under my skin in a way that few people ever have,” Obama writes in
The Audacity of Hope, adding that Keyes’ verbal attacks
left him “frequently tongue-tied, irritable and
uncharacteristically tense.”
Obama cruised to victory with 70 percent of the vote —
winning by a 43-point margin, the largest in the state’s history of
U.S. Senate elections.
Keyes didn’t lose despite his oratory, but rather in part
because of it. As Obama put it, “Keyes proceeded during the course
of a mere three months to offend just about everybody.” Or as one
Illinois voter told USA Today about Keyes, “The man is
always lecturing. I will not be lectured to.” It is reasonable to
think Gingrich would provoke a similar response from many
voters.
“Alan Keyes was an ideal opponent,” Obama concludes in
Audacity, “all I had to do was keep my mouth shut and
start planning my swearing in ceremony.” With Gingrich as his
opponent, Obama would probably be able to do the same in
2012.
Daniel Allott is senior writer at American Values and
a producer at In Altum Productions.
