"You can’t run for president of the United States with a staff of advisers who think everything you do is a homerun. Well, you can, but you can’t possibly win."

So how do you explain Obama?

For me Newt was finished when he sat on that couch with Nancy. This latest flub is just more dirt on the grave.

It's already too late for Newt . . . (just to get that over with)
Actually, he just suffers from the academic disease. (Probably the same thing Obama suffers from, though I would guess that Newt was a better teacher than Obama was.)
He just figures he needs to lecture for an hour, the kids will absorb it, and then pass his test. He also believes that the nodding heads in the audience means they think every word is a pearl. But, just like the old days in a college lecture, we are often thinking about where else we could be. Unfortunately in politics, you can't make people follow your lesson plan. They have to be persuaded, and Newt does not persuade very well, he just lectures.

Curing diseases doesn't have to mean reduced costs. Reducing the numner of people that drop dead of heart attacks means that we spend a lot more money treating them for other diseases, like cancer etc. And, even if we cured all of those diseases, we would still need to spend a lot more money to take care of them because your body just wears out as you get older.

We need a bigger room. We're gonna get a bigger room, right?

"You can’t run for president of the United States with a staff of advisers who think everything you do is a homerun. Well, you can, but you can’t possibly win."

What MarkW said. Obama certainly proved it can be done. The real problem is that you can't possibly *govern* with a staff like that. Which Obama has also been busily proving.

As for Newt - all I can say is "don't let the screen door hit you." He has far too much in common with Bill Clinton (and Obamam) for my tastes. Among other things they all take themselves entirely too seriously. Being president requires a sense of one's limitations, as well as one's strengths, and a real sense of humility, humor and even irony about oneself.

Ronald Reagan could laugh at himself. So could George W. Bush. JFK's sense of irony verged on the cynical. (When some members of his administration got a little full of themselves after a magazine reporter called them "coruscatingly brilliant", the president remarked, "A few thousand votes the other way and we'd all be coruscatingly stupid.") For all that they felt they had a reason for running, and that they were at least as plausible as president as the guys they ran against, all three men privately (and sometimes publicly) understood that their real competition was the giants who had come before them.

I honestly think that Newt (like Clinton and Obama) really believes he is the near-equal of a Washington, a Jefferson, a Lincoln, TR or FDR. Given the same challenges I think all three are supremely and almost unreflexively confident that they could do as well, all things considered. Reagan and Bush would do their best and hope for the best, but I doubt either had the hubris to do so without a hint of self-doubt or humility.

Humility isn't something Newt has in large amounts. He's right up there with Mr. "I can lower the level of the Oceans", and "Just let me give a speech and I'll fix that Middle East thing". And a Gingrich administration would be just as big a collection of failed initiatives and broken promise, except they would be more conservative initiatives and promises. (Well, *some* of them would be. ;-))

Regards,

Joe

Newt's on-going problem has been that his ego has always been larger than his intellect. Granted, one has to have a significant ego in order to seek higher office, but his is world-class.

If he's so smart, why does he use "social engineering" to mean "drastic change," when it means nothing of the sort?

"One major source of Newt’s problems is that he is almost always the smartest guy in the room. ... he can’t take unwelcome advice from his staff."

"Smart" minus "humility" equals "dangerous," especially anywhere near the levers of power. A man who doesn't know what he doesn't know and cannot admit when he's wrong is not someone I want in office.

I have not sensed in Mr. Gingrich any sense of urgency about the debt crisis, nor any understanding of where the Tea Party is coming from--that we WANT drastic change to fix a drastic problem--nor how the voters are eager to find a candidate who will take direction from US instead of vice-versa.

Brains are good, of course, but it also depends on what those brains are cogitating.

Jonah's high praise notwithstanding, Newt's not the man for this time. He just isn't.

In a graduate seminar, a professor once posed to my class the following question:
"What is the difference between politics and policy?"
We each tried to address the question, and most gave lengthy and convoluted answers. By coincidence and seating arrangement, I was last. Knowing it would please my professor, who was a Straussian focused on the distinction between the "is" and the "ought," I answered:
"Policy is about what's right and politics is about what works."
If Newt Gingrich could keep that dinstinction always in his mind and tailor his public words accordingly, he would be far more likely to win support fo his presidential campaign. Because he cannot, he is forever stating political dicta as if they are matters of policy, and vice versa.
No amount of communications skill can transform the IS into the OUGHT. Ergo, Newt is toast.