Newt Gingrich tries desperately to stay relevant
What do you think Tom Foley is up to these days? You know, the former speaker of the House of Representatives. What about Dennis Hastert? Don't know? Don't care?
Although the job is an important one -- indeed, the only specific member of the House with a constitutionally-designated special position -- it's still an ignominious fate that waits for most speakers. After all, although speakers might imagine themselves as national politicians, and counterweights to the president, they're only ever elected by one district. And, of course, the speaker is also elected by the House, which is a pretty consistently unpopular institution. No wonder Foley and Hastert faded away. There's just no public appetite for them, no avenue by which they might get into the national popular imagination and stay.
And this, I think, is the best way to understand Newt Gingrich's regrettable career since he left the House in the late 1990s. Gingrich has always thought of himself as a world-historical figure and leading intellectual light of his age. So he's built a whole way of life around not turning into Rodney Dangerfield. The very last thing he wants is the fate that probably awaits him in the end: berating rooms of ignorant kids about how he gets no respect. It'd be classic tragic irony if it weren't, in fact, pretty comical.
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