COMMENTARY | Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is running for president, has done something that very few politicians tend to do. He has apologized without reservation for a major political blunder.
The blunder in this case was an ad Gingrich cut on behalf of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project with then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the necessity of fighting what is euphemistically called “climate change.” At the time, the ad raised a lot of hackles among conservatives who regard the climate change or global warming imbroglio as unsettled science that is being used as an excuse for a massive expansion of government.
On Fox News, Gingrich now admits that cutting the ad, which depicted him sitting on a couch with Pelosi with the Capitol Building in the background, as the “dumbest single thing I’ve done in years.”
Gingrich has also taken a more agnostic view on climate change than previously, though he claims that the majority of the National Academy of Science agrees that man-caused global warming is taking place. He seemed unaware that global warming essentially stopped in 1998 and the world is undergoing a cooling trend.
Gingrich hastened to point out, as he did at the time of the controversy, that he favors market based solutions for alternative energy and environmental health as opposed to the big government alternatives favored by the Obama administration.
There are two ways to look at this development.
The cynical way to look at it is that Gingrich is undergoing an election-year conversion, telling the conservative base what it wants to hear. This view suggests that Gingrich is recanting from his environmental views to appeal to Republican voters he needs to win the nomination.
The benign – and I think correct – way to look at it is to suggest that Gingrich is having an attack of humility. It is not as if he was ever against carbon-based fuel. He favors a massive expansion of drilling for oil and natural gas. His eating of humble pie on national TV fits neatly with his new, adult mien, eschewing ego in preference to advancing a cause. It is another point in his favor in his quest for the presidency.