Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

Yeah, yeah, we all get it - Newt Gingrich is crazy and still way too politically radioactive to run a presidential campaign. But it's a good thing he's touring New Hampshire and Iowa, because he's saying a lot of things other people aren't. Here are some choice bits from David Yepsen's column yesterday in the Des Moines Register:

He's also searching for improved ways to conduct campaigns so the nation can better focus on serious issues.
...
Gingrich, during a visit with a group of us at the paper, admitted, "I don't have an answer. The reason I wrote the book and the reason I'm out here is trying to begin to figure out: How do you set a different tone? Ironically, Hillary (Clinton) and I have the same instinct, which is the country is just sick of it. Our partisans aren't, but the country is just sick of it."

Honestly, anyone who doesn't have the same instinct at this point is just broadly out of touch, which, I suspect, says a lot about our politicians. Let's also count this the first time on the blog I officially said Hillary Clinton might be politically smart enough to win the 2008 election.

Gingrich the historian said a little perspective is in order. "It's helpful not to over-romanticize the past," and he noted how political campaigns have always been raucous affairs. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton "subsidized papers to smear the other side." And a great deal of rum and whiskey was poured around election time for voters in many early elections. Abraham Lincoln was vilified by his enemies as a black man, which was about the worst thing you could say about someone at the time.

"It is inevitable we're going to have a lot of junk, just as we had a lot of junk in the 19th century," Gingrich said.

However, there were also things like the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates in the Illinois U.S. Senate race that year. ... Gingrich said a modern-day version of that might be helpful. He also said there should be no moderator in the 2008 presidential debates. "Just two adults talking . . . that would change the quality of those debates."

What, no reference to how Lincoln was called Honest Ape? The idea of no moderator in the 2008 debates would really be exciting. Imagine how it would go: say one candidate gets to speak first in the first debate, and the other candidate gets to speak first in the next two. They talk for a while, and their only time limit is audience tolerance. See, the other candidate couldn't interrupt, because it would look bad, but the first candidate couldn't hog the floor, because that looks bad too. Each candidate would try to maximize speaking time, but they'd have to keep it civil on the surface and increasingly move into harsh but pleasantly worded commentary. Oh, I'd love it. And best of all, since the candidates are two of the few political insiders who actually do give a shit about their health care plans, they'd spend a lot more time talking about substantive issues. If the 2008 debates had one moderated debate, one unmoderated debate, and one town hall, I'm confident we'd move away from moderated debates in the future.

And, he said, "I've thought seriously that if I ever did run, I'd refuse to do any cattle shows. If you think that gets you good leadership, you shouldn't even think about running. It's silly. It demeans the office. Any random person who thinks they can run can show up. A lot of it trivializes the whole process of picking the leader of the most complicated society in the world."

(So I guess we might not see him at that mother of all cattle shows - the big straw poll Iowa Republicans do in Ames each summer before their January presidential caucuses.)

Now this is another exciting idea. I was surprised in the 2004 general election that the Republicans never came up with any offending quotes from John Kerry during any of the Democratic cattle calls. It was amazing to watch: everyone knew a million debates (or forums, or joint appearances...) was a bad idea, but you can't turn down the Human Rights Campaign, or the Building Trades, or NARAL, or any of these other organizations without getting into serious trouble. When three candidates skipped out on the NAACP annual meeting, after showing up at the Urban League forum the month before, NAACP president Kweisi Mfume called those three candidates "persona non grata" and made them come back two days later and beg for forgiveness. It was embarrassing for the candidates, NAACP, and the process itself. (Incidentally, Mfume's running for Senate now, and this is why I don't support him, at least in the primary.) The Republicans don't have this problem as much as the Democrats, who are increasingly becoming the coalition of interest groups of which they've always been accused. Still, it's good to see one candidate smart enough to back off of these cattle calls, and to announce it well enough in advance that other candidates can follow and Newt himself can take a slightly smaller political hit.

So, again, I wouldn't support Newt Gingrich for dogcatcher. But he's got a lot of great ideas, and the other candidates would be wise to pay attention.