Nancy as the new Marianne?

What's this supposed to mean? Drudge has been pushing it as "PELOSI THREAT: NEWT WON'T BE PRESIDENT/'THERE IS SOMETHING I KNOW.'"

Is Pelosi implying possession of some secret knowledge nugget? The clip is creepy. I feel like the network is teasing us with another woman — after last week's ex-wife interview — who's going to step into the spotlight and say a few words that will supposedly be sufficient to take down Gingrich.

It's interesting that it's John King doing the little sequence with Pelosi, because it was John King who moderated last Thursday's debate and began it by confronting Newt Gingrich with what his ex-wife had said. Newt pounced on John King that night. (For a visual depiction of the pounce, you've got to watch this. Go to 2:17 for the kill.)

Anyway, what's up with Nancy? In that clip with King, she seems weirdly woozy. I can't tell if she's claiming to have her own personal anti-Newt stink-bomb or if she just feels like she has ESP: "It isn't going to happen... There is something I know."

Now, Newt is saying: "I have a simple challenge for Speaker Pelosi...you know, put up or shut up." Ooh! He really knows how to talk to the ladies. I mean... we've certainly reached a new milestone in the advancement of women.

UPDATE: Pelosi's office says she meant it in the ESP way, not the own personal anti-Newt stink-bomb way.

"No, no, that is not a marriage," said Marianne Gingrich.

Was she talking about marriage between a man and another man or a woman and another woman, which, of course, Newt Gingrich excludes from the definition of marriage? No, she was talking about a marriage between a man (Newt) and a woman (her) in which the woman does not have the man all to herself but will share him with another woman (Callista, who accepted the concept of sharing):



ADDED: If the embedded video doesn't work for you, go here.

UPDATE: Just watched the "Frontline" interview. I thought it was nothing (aside from the strange allegations against Marianne having to do with meeting with an arms dealer and asking for $10 million). Basically, it's the same story we always knew. He had an affair, and then they got divorced. I don't really understand her motivation to go on camera to say that. She seems like a very grim and sad woman.

"What is it Gingrich is afraid his wife of 18 years is going to remember incorrectly?"

"And what could be so bad that it would eclipse all that many Christian conservatives have already forgiven and forgotten about his history?"

We already have Marianne Gingrich's 2010 interview with Esquire. WaPo's Melinda Henneberger summarizes them:

1. Newt actually started seeing his geometry teacher, the first Mrs. Newt Gingrich, when he was only 16....

2. Early in their marriage, she had to take over the budget "because it was too stressful for Newt."...

3. ... "You know what he hated most?” Marianne says. “When they talked about him being fat. That weight thing was personal."...

4. That after his Congressional career ended in scandal, he pretty much fell apart: "There were times... when he wasn’t functioning. He started yelling at people, which he’d never done before, and he’d get weirdly ‘overfocused’ on getting things done — manic, as if he was running out of time. He took to taking meetings while eating, slurping his food, as if he wasn’t aware or didn’t care how strange it looked."...

5. That he has lost his way and wants more than anything a lifestyle that’s “opulent” or “self-indulgent.”...

6. That he begged her to “tolerate” his affair with Callista, his third and current wife....

7. That his conversion to Catholicism "has no meaning."...

8. That he might go ahead and run for president anyway, because "he doesn’t connect things like normal people."

I've elided Henneberger's sloughing off of each of these items. She thinks Marianne will have to come up with something new and worse to destroy Newt. But I'm not so sure. Who bothered with the Esquire article back in 2010? The point is to throw this stuff right in our face now, when we're excited about judging Newt. To see the ex-wife's face as she lets this stuff out... it's titillating. We'll pay attention. We'll make clips of the juiciest seconds. The experience of receiving the tidbits will be entirely different. They don't have to be new tidbits to feel vividly new. Picture it.

Now, picture Mitt, a man with a spotless personal life. (And by "spotless," I don't mean to cause you to start thinking about that dog again. The worst thing he's ever done seems to be to have transported and cleaned his dog in a way that he believed was good but was probably not.)

Styles of the prospective First Ladies.

A nice array of the wives of all the GOP candidates who have wives.

I'll just say I like the Ann Romney short coat/long jacket look, Mary Kaye Huntsman has a lovely figure, Callista is bizarre in her conservatism, Anita Perry needs a little more coverage, Karen Santorum looks most like the women I see around town in Madison, Wisconsin, and Carol Paul looks like the women you see everywhere in America.

The reason why every not-Romney candidate but Bachmann has had a surge.

We're experiencing the Santorum surge now, and it seems that the conservatives looking for a way to stop Romney have simply converged on him after the sequential failure of their efforts to converge on Perry, Cain, and Gingrich. But why not Bachmann? She won the Iowa straw poll back in August. If she was that strong then, why was she denied her turn for a surge?

There was her blunder talking about the HPV vaccine causing mental retardation, but that was a single incidence of loose talk, relaying an anecdote, and I doubt if most people even remember that.

I think what has held her back is her husband. A candidate's spouse matters. It was recently reported that when Newt Gingrich was divorcing his first wife, he (supposedly) said to a close friend: "You know and I know that she’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a president." Now, Gingrich is on his third wife, and she's relatively young and pretty (though she strikes many people as weird). But Gingrich's decline coincided with some intense focus on Callista. I'm not saying his decline was all about Callista. He had his surge, and that drew all sorts of scrutiny and criticism, and there was plenty to bring him back down. Yet the wife — and the wives — have mattered.

My question is: Why did Michele Bachmann get passed over in the sequence of surges? And my answer is that once people saw what her husband Marcus was like, they excluded her from consideration. For a female candidate, the spousal question is quite complicated. We expect the candidate herself to live up to some of the expectations we have — consciously or unconsciously — of the wives of male candidates. But what of the husband? Who will be the first First Gentleman in history? What's he supposed to be like? The role needs to be invented. And it couldn't be invented with the raw material that is Marcus Bachmann. Once people noticed him and tried to imagine him as the first First Gentleman, they ceased to conceive of her as a possible President.

If you don't remember how Marcus Bachmann burst into the national consciousness, refresh your recollection:

LAT article on Mitt's marriage illustrated with a photo of Ann Romney seemingly biting some other man's nose.

Let's close in on the photo:



It's generally a lovely picture of the couple, and it's nicely new, taken this week. Is there some journalistic rule against photoshopping a ludicrous stray face part out of a picture? It almost looks photoshopped in. It's completely absurd to have that nose — it looks like Bob Hope's nose — right between her teeth. And the intimacy of her connection to her husband is mocked by wedging a mystery man into the tiny space between them.

The title of the article — "Spotlight on Romney's marriage casts shadow on Gingrich's past" — seems designed to distract us from the distinct charm of Ann Romney's story...

... how her husband comforted her in her "hardest hour," when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (telling her he didn't care if they ate cold cereal every night for the rest of their lives); and how he used to call home during his business trips when she was a young mother of five sons to say, "Remember, Ann, what you are doing is more important than what I am doing."

He teases her publicly about her "fiscal discipline." She corrects him aloud when he misspeaks at his events. They hold hands. They exchange tender glances. The chemistry between them is unmistakable.

Unmistakable even with a strange man's nose and grimace stuck in and the accusation — read the whole article — that Mitt Romney is calling attention to his marriage in order to make voters think ill of Newt Gingrich, the admitted adulterer on his third wife, a woman young enough to be his daughter.

"Perhaps Callista thinks unchanging style evokes consistency and reliability?"

"Unfortunately, her fashion choices evoke Barbara Bush Senior, and a bygone era."

The cat claws are out for Callista, whose own hyper-manicured claws "are folded neatly over her lap, a posture she frequently assumes." She "assumes her signature rigid stance." If she's in any position, it is — in Daily Beast talk — a position she assumes. Because she's just that kind of person, now, isn't she? So entitled.

"From her perfectly coiffed bob to her bespoke power suits, Callista Gingrich possesses a style that evokes a woman who wants to mirror her husband’s wealth and power — and lacks any singularity." She assumes her rigid position — her stance — next to the man, mirroring him, wearing a version of his suit, lacking any personality of her own. Lacking any "singularity." Are you kidding? She's the most distinctive-looking person on the political scene! The bright colors, the sharp edges, the signature hair.

"Heaven forbid she looked slightly mismatched. Mrs. Gingrich seems pleased with herself." Seems pleased. Seems. We're being fair. We don't purport to know what goes on inside the lady's cranium. But check out her "stiff... bob" !"Will we ever catch her with a hair or button out of place?" She's so controlled. That control freak. That rigid woman. Assuming her position. Existing without singularity. Pleased with herself as she mirrors the man.

All the quotes go to a slide show at The Daily Beast, which is based on this article — "Newt Gingrich's Wife Callista's Prissy Style Problem" — by political fashion writer Robin Givhan, though Givhan's name does not appear at the slide show. Givhan's tone is different, analytic and intermittently empathetic:

Mrs. Gingrich’s style has evolved from that of a young professional who looked as if her closet might have been an outpost of Ann Taylor to a woman who has set out to exude wealth, control, and exceptionalism.

Exceptionalism... is that anything like singularity, which the slide show told us she had none of.

The unspoken rule of political style: do not tempt audiences into pondering how much mirror time one requires—or indulges in—on a daily basis. ...

In contemporary fashion, as well as in politics, style is supposed to look effortless. When effort is apparent, it is damning. It doesn’t matter if a woman takes hours for full hair and makeup, as long as the result looks as if it took only 15 minutes. Imperfection is a mark of modern sophistication, confidence, and youthfulness.

See how Givhan folds in larger cultural issues?

In the broader, contemporary culture, however, her closely tailored blazers, precisely applied makeup, glossy nails, and hair that never requires a glancing adjustment all exude an excruciating prissiness. Her many style tics—stacked one atop the other—read as code for narcissism, self-indulgence, and brittle self-absorption.

Givhan isn't really criticizing Callista here at all. She's telling us about ourselves and how we understand the trappings of beauty and fashion.

Callista Gingrich stands out because, like a woman of the 1950s and early 1960s, she is dressing beyond her years. Youthfulness is not her obsession. Control and order are.

I'm shocked to read that Callista is only 45 years old. Perhaps she's dressing old to erase the appearance of an age gap in her marriage to a man who's pushing 70.

Style can be used to break down barriers. It can show stature and authority and also exude commonality.

But when it is too perfect, too formal, too stiff, it sets one apart. In Mrs. Gingrich’s case, style implies a social hierarchy that, far from exuding empathy, reflects the haughty airs of noblesse oblige.

Givhan's final judgment — that Callista looks like she lacks empathy — lacks empathy.

Ann Beattie's "Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life" is hilariously panned in the NYT.

By Michiko Kakutani.

[A] narcissistic, self-indulgent, hot-air-filled tome that condescends to its ostensible subject, Mrs. Nixon, and that wastes the reader’s time making ridiculous comparisons between, say, the Nixons and the characters in the Raymond Carver story “Cathedral,” or between the Nixons and the characters in the Chekhov story “The Lady With the Little Dog.” There are silly creative-writing-class exercises, like replacing every noun in Mr. Nixon’s famous Checkers speech with the seventh noun below it in the dictionary; and imagining some incidental events in Mrs. Nixon’s life (like taking a bubble bath or drawing sea creatures in the beach sand with her big toe). The chapter titled “Mrs. Nixon Has Thoughts on the War’s Escalation” consists of this one inane sentence: “You and Henry ordering the ‘Christmas Bombing’ was pesky!”...

...Ms. Beattie spreads a gluey gloss of speculation over Pat Nixon, much of it patronizing, stupid or insulting. For example, she writes that Mrs. Nixon thought for herself, but did so “well within cultural conditioning” and “didn’t think metaphorically.”

In one of her efforts to impersonate Mrs. Nixon, Ms. Beattie assumes an icky, Mrs. Cleaver-like voice, talking about making milkshakes to fatten up her husband so he’ll look better on TV in the next debate against John F. Kennedy. (“It’s festive, pretty and full of calories.”) Worse, much of this book feels like a lecture about creative writing....

Ouch. Remember when everyone fawned over Ann Beattie?

"I’m thinking he would have to have a split personality to do the things that were said."

Gloria Cain.

Herman Cain nailed "Meet the Press."

In my opinion, and I was quite critical of Cain after the last debate. Here's the transcript and video. I'll add a few comments to this post soon.

ADDED: I thought David Gregory really lost his cool early on, as he was questioning Cain about 9-9-9. If you watch the video, you can see he's agitated and grimacing in a way that really lacks the usual polished journalist quality. To excerpt the transcript bits that hint of this attitude:

The reality of the plan is that some people pay more, some people pay less.... You're saying [prices] actually go down?... This isn't about behavior, Mr. Cain, this is about whether you pay--if you don't pay taxes now, and you now have income tax and a sales tax, you pay more in taxes.... Mr. Cain, we talked to independent analysts ourselves.... We're not just reading newspaper clips here...  They tell us, they've looked at this, based on what's available of the plan, and it's incontrovertible.

Gregory's experts are incontrovertible? What kind of a question is that? How does Cain deal with this barrage of disbelief from Gregory? He stands his ground and explains his program:

Some people will pay more, but most people would pay less is my argument.... Who will pay more?  The people who spend more money on new goods. The sales tax only applies to people who buy new goods, not used goods....

This discussion got me thinking about the positive side of switching to sales tax. With a progressive income tax, the political process sets different percentages for different income levels, so, for example, the majority can vote jack up the taxes on other people — "the rich" — and those other people can work on extracting various exemptions and credits and so forth in an elaborate, inscrutable government system. With a sales tax, you control what you pay through your shopping decisions. Every time you forgo a purchase or buy used goods — and isn't that good for the environment? — you pay no tax. And every time you choose smaller amounts or cheaper goods, you pay less tax. Now, you have various needs that you have to meet, but you have far more control, and you aren't at the mercy of the ever-ongoing machinations of the political process.

My point is: After the debate last week, I was thinking about the negative aspects of the sales tax, but as he was talking about it on "Meet the Press" today, I felt open-minded about the potential benefits. And that was while Gregory was going for the jugular.

MORE: Gregory asked about the Occupy Wall Street movement: "Do you empathize, as the president does, with the message of those Wall Street protesters?" Gregory invites him to express empathy, a concept Obama has actively promoted (which Gregory prompts us to recall). Cain homes in on the premise that there is a message and proceeds right to criticism of Obama:

What is their message?  That's what's unclear.  If that message is, "Let's punish the rich," I don't empathize with that message.  They should be protesting the White House.  The White House has basically enacted failed economic policies.  The White House and the Democrats have spent $1 trillion that did not work.  Now the president wants to pass another $450 billion. They have their frustrations directed at the wrong group.  That's what I'm saying. 

Nice clarity and brevity and excellent sharp perception of the opportunity in the question asked.

AND: Gregory confronted him with an extreme statement he made back in February: "The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country" and followed up with a pointed "You think liberals actually seek to do that, that that's their mission, to destroy the economy?"

Cain stood his ground: "It is their mission.  Because they do not believe in a stronger America, in my opinion. Yes."

Gregory let it go at that and moved on to another one of Cain's presumably insufficiently thoughtful statements: "You've also said that stupid people are ruining America.... Who exactly are you talking about?"

MR. CAIN:  People who are uninformed.  People who will not look at an alternate idea.  People who are so dug in with partisanship and partisan politics.  Open-mindedness is what's going to save this country.  The reason that my message is appealing is because it's simple and people can understand it.  You know, a good idea transcends party politics...

Somehow, the next question on Gregory's list was: "Is race a factor in this campaign?" Obviously, Cain's answer is going to be no. I'm more interested in why Gregory jumped from "stupid people" to race. Gregory next displays the new Newsweek cover, which calls Cain "the Anti-Obama," and starts to put together a question: "You've actually talked a bit about race, though, and you've created a contrast between yourself and your experience as an African-American, a term you don't like, by the way."

So suddenly the topic is the terminology of race: African-American or black American, which Cain prefers. Gregory asks why. Cain says:

Because my roots go back through slavery in this country.  Yes, they came from Africa, but the roots of my heritage are in the United States of America.  So I consider myself a black American.

That's a very rich statement. Slavery is a heritage. But Gregory goes for the implicit distinction between Cain and Obama: "So you draw some distinction between yourself and your experiences as a black man in America and the experience of President Obama."

Cain says:

Absolutely.  I came from very humble beginnings.  My mother was a maid, my father was a barber and janitor and a chauffeur.  We, we had to, we had to learn--do things the old-fashioned way.  We had to work for it.  I--my parents never saw themselves as a victim, so I didn't learn how to be a victim.  I didn't have anything given to me.  I had to work very hard in order to be able to go to school and work my way through school....

Notice how simply and vividly he struck a chord — the classic black American experience — and made it resonate for anyone who works for living. There is a quality of nobility, that fits with the idea of heritage. Gregory is at a complete loss, I think, to do anything with this:

MR. GREGORY:  You actually said President Obama's outside the mainstream.  So you're making a different, more of a social cultural background distinction between you and the president.

MR. CAIN:  More experiential.  Look at his experiences vs. my experiences. It was more at a contrast of experiential differences than anything else.

MR. GREGORY:  Let's talk about foreign policy...

YET MORE: I liked the way, when asked to name his model for the ideal Supreme Court justice, he focused on Clarence Thomas:

I believe that Justice Clarence Thomas, despite all of the attacks that he gets from the left, he basically rules and makes his decisions, in my opinion, based upon the Constitution and solid legal thinking. Justice Clarence Thomas is one of my models.

MR. GREGORY: Has he been targeted unfairly, you think?

MR. CAIN: I think he has been targeted unfairly.

Gregory declines to follow up about what the unfairness was. He moves on to the topic of Cain's wife Gloria, who's been invisible so far. He gave a lovely explanation:

My wife and I, we have a family life, and she is maintaining the calmness and the tranquility of that family life so, when I do get a day off of the campaign trail, I can go home and enjoy my family.

She's his wife, not America's wife. Home is a refuge. That's a good traditionalist message.

Whose spouse is Rick Santorum talking about?

"When you look at someone to determine whether they’d be the right person for public office, look at who they lay down with at night and what they believe in... Who is the person at their side who has.. the closest counselor to that person? If you want to find out if that person who you are voting for is going to stand tall and stand tough, find out where the spouse of that person is."

Spoken at the Value Voters Summit yesterday. (Video at the link.)

Alec MacGillis wonders whose spouse he's talking about:

Might it be the wife who reportedly urged one candidate to order a mandatory vaccine for the HPV virus? Or the wife who, lo so many years ago, gave $150 to her local Planned Parenthood chapter? Or, perhaps, not a wife at all, but the lone husband in the field of spouses? Hard to believe, given that said spouse has taken such vigorous action in fighting the scourge of homosexuality, a mission Santorum also cares deeply about. In any case, let's hope Santorum can clear this matter up at next week's debate in New Hampshire.

MacGillis assumes Santorum was talking about the spouse of one of the GOP candidates, but he might have been thinking about Michelle Obama. Should we feel that it's appropriate and even important to scrutinize the candidates' spouses? It's conventional to say that the family is off limits, but I'll bet a lot of Obama opponents feel he might have been defeated if spousal scrutiny were regarded as fully legitimate.

Anita Perry, "a quiet feminine force," " a nurse first, first lady second."

A profile in the NYT.

President George W. Bush escorting Nancy Reagan at the funeral for Betty Ford.

Photographs ##1 and 14 in this slideshow.

AND: Bush has an intense 7-minute conversation with Hillary before the funeral begins. Meanwhile, Nancy sits silently on his other side, and Michelle sits silently on Hillary's other side. Bush, hanging with the First Ladies... and giving all his attention to Hillary.

Betty Ford.

RIP.

Blaming "politically correct" textbooks for the widespread ignorance about history.

It's David McCullough (the very popular writer of historical biographies):

"History is often taught in categories—women's history, African American history, environmental history—so that many of the students have no sense of chronology. They have no idea what followed what."

What's more, many textbooks have become "so politically correct as to be comic. Very minor characters that are currently fashionable are given considerable space, whereas people of major consequence farther back"—such as, say, Thomas Edison—"are given very little space or none at all."

Mr. McCullough's eyebrows leap at his final point: "And they're so badly written. They're boring! Historians are never required to write for people other than historians."

McCullough sounds a bit self-promoting or self-defensive there. He knows he writes well. He's popular. And other historians disrespect that, perversely. But keep to the point. Who writes textbooks for schoolkids? Not the lofty scholars McCullough has a gripe about. There should be an immense amount of care taken with respect to school textbooks. Why wouldn't those things be written especially well? The whole point is to digest material and present it for the consumption of children.

Also, it seems to me that McCullough himself gives "considerable space" to  "minor characters" to satisfy the "fashionable" interest in women's history. I read his tome about Truman, and there was an insane amount of material about Bess Truman. I mean, there's no historical significance at all to Bess Truman as far as I can remember. It just doesn't matter. It was pablum for female readers. And then he did it again with his book about John Adams. Abigail Adams is more important than Bess Truman, but nevertheless, why are we reading a thousand-page book about a reasonably nice marriage? Clearly, McCullough isn't following some rule about giving characters attention in proportion to their historical significance.

"I knew that Scott would be bold and ... the promises he made, I knew that he would keep," Tonette Walker said.

From the Wisconsin State Journal:

"I just didn't know they were going to happen so quickly. So soon. I was busy trying to move our family and the next thing I know, I had 4,000 people outside my home in Wauwatosa."

It didn't take long for the governor's mansion to become the family's only refuge. The governor and first lady didn't go out to eat or attend teacher conferences at their sons' school.

The family received threats. Protesters confronted their teenage sons in grocery stores, she said.

"'We hate your husband,' 'We hate your father' ... of course those things are hard to hear," Walker said.

After a while, the stress wore on her. She would choke up watching the news. She even called the governor and his staff, questioning them about the controversy. "I would say to Scott ... 'Is this really, really what you have to do?'" she said. "And after he would explain it to me, I would be better again."

Another political wife. By the way, she's 11 years older than Governor Walker. And her maiden name is Tarantino. She met Scott Walker at a karaoke bar in Milwaukee:

Every time someone would rise to head to the stage to sing, the two would lock eyes and make approving or disapproving faces at one another....

Toward the end of the night, the young man rose to leave. As he passed, the future governor handed her a napkin with his phone number on it. Five months later the two returned to Saz's, where Scott Walker proposed to her the same way — on a napkin.

"I see the sadness and worry that's creasing his face... This man doesn't take a day off."

Michelle Obama needs to get some tips from Callista Gingrich.

Gingrich implodes.

"Newt Gingrich’s top staff quit en masse Thursday...."

Gingrich was intent on using technology and standing out at debates to get traction while his advisers believed he needed to run a campaign that incorporated both traditional, grassroots techniques as well as new ideas.

One official said the last straw came when Gingrich went forward with taking a long-planned cruise with his wife last week in the Greek isles....

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH said: "Here's Calista Gingrich to tell us what she thinks":



ADDED: Roger L. Simon writes:

Two of the key operatives who just left Gingrich’s staff -Dave Carney and Rob Johnson – have been major advisers to Gov. Rick Perry. Does this mean Perry is about to jump in the presidential race? Sure looks like it.

AND: Callista was the problem! So says Fred Barnes:

Aides to Newt Gingrich have resigned from his presidential campaign in protest of what they felt was a takeover by Callista Gingrich, the candidate’s wife since 2000.

"Who was your Elizabeth Edwards?"

"The goddess of frumpy wives and older mothers? The cancer patient who would not be defined by her disease? The noble, betrayed wife? The political operative whose complicity in covering up her husband’s infidelity could have cost the Democratic Party the presidency?"

Asks Jan Hoffman, in the NYT, on the day of Elizabeth Edwards's funeral.

Elizabeth Edwards, who struggled with cancer, marriage, and the quest for power...

... has died, at the age of 61.

Did you remember that she graduated from law school? She was one of the new sort of political wives, who had independent career aspirations yet choose to move into a man's shadow.