His actions in his personal life and his self-justification are pretty disgusting.
What it points to, though, is that politicians as a whole have to have a pretty strong ego to manage the slings and arrows of outrageous - well, not fortune, but opponents, constituents, and the media. It gets very easo for a strong ego to slide on over into Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and way too many politicos suffer from that, as I believe that Newt does.
Gingrich was a big disappointment to me. I was naive when I first saw him, before I even moved to Georgia, at the 1983 science fiction Worldcon. At the time I thought he was creative - not too many politicians came to sf cons - and I liked that he was in the Congressional Space Caucus. But that is before he proved himself, as Ed says, morally bankrupt and power hungry. He is now associating with some of the worst elements of the right, such as Christian Nation liar David Barton. He also had a lot of chutzpah converting to Roman Catholicism after being divorced twice.
Overall, I think a politician's private life is no one else's business. However, I get bothered by the hypocrisy of those who spout off about family values and then violate them and expect impunity. This inclludes Gingrich, who told his first wife he was divorcing her while she was in the hospital with cancer and did not want to pay child support; Rudy Guiliani, whose wife found out at a press conference he was divorcing her; George Rekars, Ted Haggard, and Larry Craig, who may be twisted up irretrievably from trying to deny their sexual orientation, David Vitter and his being diapered by prostitutes, and so on. Bill Clinton bothered me mostly because I thought Monica Lewinsky was such a ditz. Elliot Spitzer was a deep disappointment because he had done and said things that I thought were really good, and I was hoping for great things from him.
People are complex. Character is a complex issue. Should it be a part of how we evaluate candidates? I'm really confused on the issue. On the one hand, I want people in office with integrity. On the other hand, it is easy to be cynical and say that power destroys integrity and there are very few in office who have it. I am amused that as hysterical as the right is about Obama, accusing him of being every bad buzzword in their lexicon, no one has so far accused him of infidelity. He seems to have excellent family values, and I will be disappointed if that turns out not to be true.
Ok, rant over.
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