Will Newt’s Cheating Help Him?
This column marks the first installment of Groupthink, a new article format in which your comments and responses are re-worked back into the article to invite further discussion and draw new conclusions—at least until SOPA shuts it down.
What a week for Newt Gingrich: while his marital history has been a shadow over his campaign throughout primary season, this week his ex-wife Marianne admitted in an interview with ABC News that Gingrich had asked her for an open marriage in 1999 and promptly divorced her when she refused. In light of his infidelity with current wife Callista Gingrich, Marianne alleges that her ex-husband does not have “the moral character” to be president.
Leave it to Fox News to take the opposite tack. Member of the Fox News Medical A-Team, psychiatrist Keith Ablow, wrote in a recent article that “Mr. Gingrich’s married life, including his history of infidelity does not mean… that Mr. Gingrich would be unfaithful to the United States of America or the Constitution of the United States. You can take any moral position you like about men and women who cheat while married, but there simply is no correlation, whatsoever—from a psychological perspective—between whether they can remain true to their wedding vows and whether they can remain true to the Oath of Office.” He goes on to further state that Gingrich’s questionable moral past may actually make him a stronger president:
1) His apparent irresistibility to women may very well translate to that sort of popularity with female voters and with the American public under the Gingrich administration—Ablow predicts that we’ll be clamoring for a third term in no time.
2) Gingrich’s ability to tell his wives that he no longer loves them is indicative of a similar hard-line but sympathetic tack in foreign policy. Lord knows that this iron-fist-with-a-velvet-grip may be just the sort of tone the US must strike in order to mediate impending conflict with Iran.
3) Gingrich’s kids seem to like him, even after all of this, and kids are never wrong about their parents.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Ablow has a checkered marital past of his own—or is campaigning to be Gingrich spouse #4. However, in the interest of maintaining the “coldly analytical” tone Dr. Ablow adopts in his article, I must respectfully challenge his conclusions. Buss & Shackelford’s 1997 study on marital infidelity found that serial cheaters commonly show personality patterns of low conscientiousness, high narcissism, and high psychoticism, not exactly on the American public’s wish list of presidential traits. Rather than being enthralled with Gingrich’s directness with his wives once they fell out of favor, shouldn’t we be concerned with the secrecy and deception that likely preceded this direct confrontation? And as long as we’re leaving authority on a candidate’s fitness up to that candidate’s children… well, all I can say is that I am really going to miss Jon Huntsman’s daughters.
But this is Groupthink, readers, and it’s your turn to draw some conclusions. What bearing does Gingrich’s history of marital infidelity have on his hypothetical fitness as president? (The obvious answer may be “none,” but this is primary season, and responsible reporting is overrated.) Have at it in the comment section!