COMMENTARY | Newt Gingrich loves to use indignation to get out of answering sticky questions, and the last installment of the debate season without end held no exception. According to Yahoo! News, Newt raged at moderator John King for asking about Marianne Gingrich’s assertion (ex-wife No. 2, for anyone keeping score) that Newt wanted an open marriage.
Newt said of the question: “The destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office.”
I’ll give you a moment to digest that statement. You might need a glass of irony to help it go down.
When you’re a celebrity, your life’s details aren’t relevant to fulfilling the requirements of your job. You can do or say things away from your work that aren’t so great, yet still be such a great entertainer (Alec Baldwin, I’m looking at you) that we’ll turn on the TV anyway. Celebrities’ lives do not impact ours.
A politician isn’t a celebrity. A politician is a representative of the people, both in Washington and to the rest of the world. A politician has actual power to shape lives, destroy lives, make things easier for people and make things so much harder.
If Newt Gingrich’s platform supported inclusion of non-traditional relationships, then focusing on his alleged desire for an open marriage would venture into salacious. Why? Because then we would know that his view is that people’s relationships are their relationships and people’s bedrooms are their business.
That is not his platform. Instead, he is a vocal proponent of protecting “traditional marriage.” While that term has become code for marriage between a man and a woman, traditional marriage is monogamous. Whether Newt asked for an open marriage or not — and he says it’s not true — we know he was not monogamous.
Journalists ask these questions and discuss the answers because we, the people, have a right to know the true political agendas of the individuals in whom we place the trust of our nation. Without journalists, politicians could say absolutely anything and do absolutely anything and we would never know. That is what it seems Newt means when he says that journalists make it “harder” to govern the country: it would be far easier for politicians to get elected if no one questioned their true agendas, and then for them to do whatever they wanted, in secrecy, once they got there.
That sentiment alone should terrify anyone in this country with even a passing fondness for the Constitution.
Trust is a delicate thing, and yet we must support all of the weight of our governance on something so fragile. We are entitled to have as much information as possible to find the people least likely to crumble under our trust.
We do agree on one point, though, Newt. It does seem harder and harder to find a decent person running for public office.