Contemplating a President Gingrich

Here's why Barack Obama really needs to nail his State of the Union speech tonight--and every other speech he delivers for the next ten months. Because he may be going up against one of the Great Talkers of our Time.

Almost anyone who's covered Newt Gingrich for any number of years--I have since the '90s--has found it  difficult to imagine that the country is so pathologically bent out of shape that Newt could end up as president. Not when we can often hardly believe our ears at some of the things that come out of his often eloquent but almost always ungoverned mouth. Not when even some of his closest aides and GOP allies from the time of his Speakership -- Dick Armey, Tom Delay, among others -- have joined his ex-wife Marianne in suggesting that Newt doesn't have the character for the job, that he is too unstable and "volatile" (wasn't that Rick Santorum's term, he of the even-handed world view?).

But maybe we really should think about the prospect of a Gingrich presidency, simply by default. The first reason was the appearance of Calm, Reasonable Newt at last night's debate in Florida. Obviously Gingrich and his handlers have agreed he will need to suppress his true extreme self if he's to get to the White House. Expect to see Calm, Reasonable Newt vying with Real Newt for control of his mouth for the rest of the race.

The second reason is that it's no longer deniable that Mitt Romney has a political tin ear for the ages, and that what once seemed a golden resume has turned toxic. Especially with his tax returns revealing that he's not just one of the "1 percent," but one of the one-one-hundredth of one percent, the chief beneficiary of what Warren Buffett called our "billionaire-friendly Congress." Among his fellow patricians, Mitt is so out of touch he makes George H.W. Bush look like a man who really did eat pork rinds and knew what it was like to stand on supermarket checkout lines.

Think about it: with his candidacy seemingly on the line last night in Florida--poll numbers show Newt in the lead--and facing a must-do challenge to set to rest suspicions that he is "insufficiently conservative," Romney could only bring himself to declare, "I have a record," before immediately tearing off on a wild tangent that showed mainly that he doesn't seem to understand the question. Romney responded that he had "the fun of running against Ted Kennedy," who "had to take a mortgage out on his house to make sure he could defeat me."

Uhh, that was supposed to be a joke, I think, a throwaway witticism. But it does seem to demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that Romney, who thinks Americans can "fire" their health care providers, and who just wants to let "the market" work itself out from historically unprecedented underwater mortgage debt induced by massive securities fraud, does not really dwell among his fellow Americans.

At a time when more than ten million homeowners remain unable to get out from underneath mortgages that have more value than their homes, following a devastating Wall Street-induced housing bubble that remains a vast dead weight on the economy, this proud Wall Streeter is now saying: "I'm so wonderfully rich and possess so much untaxed wealth to spend on getting myself elected that even a wealthy Kennedy had to join common Americans and put himself into debt to take me on."

"And //that's// why I'm sufficiently conservative."

From a reasonable "Massachusetts moderate" who could appeal to the center and to independents, Mitt is turning into a somewhat addled Herbert Hoover Republican. Which is making Gingrich, old 35-percent-taxable Newt, look like the people's choice by comparison.

Just playing out the possibilities here. There is still a lot of race to go, Romney still has to be seen as the favorite despite everything because of money and organization, and it's hard to imagine that Gingrich will not blow himself up in his usual manner, by uttering some piece of apocalyptic rhetoric that reveals, yet again, that he thinks the Moon is made of Green Cheese.  (He did slip back into his true Newtness for a moment last night when he declared that Americans want "someone who is prepared to be controversial." No, actually, Americans want someone who will keep them safe, free and prosperous.)

But we do need to start wondering seriously whether we could end up with a President Gingrich. The economic numbers, while improving, remain so grim that one must still think that Barack Obama is going up against election odds that have not favored incumbents in the past, no matter who is the opposing party nominee.

OMG.