But this is bigger than a footnote. So, a separate note.
HuffPost's Shannon McCaffrey says 16 aides and advisers have abandoned the Gingrich campaign. Elsewhere I read that the entire Iowa ground campaign workers had bailed.
The McCaffrey article lays most of the blame on wife #3, Callista, who reportedly exerts iron-fisted control over Nut's schedule, so much so that his staff can't make plans, can't get him to events on time, and could not convince him not to take off on a Mediterranean cruise that Callista wanted them to go on just two weeks after announcing his candidacy.
Callista is not the first political wife, I'm very sure, who has clashed with hubby's staff. But unlike Nancy Reagen, who was always looking out for "Ronnie's" best interests, it sounds like Callista is often making demands out of her own interests. Things like having to cut short a campaign rally so Callista can get back for her choir practice. Apparently she can't leave his side, so he has to cling to her when she has to go somewhere else.
That's not surprising. Callista started out as a campaign staffer for Nut -- and she knows from whence her concerns come. She knows that way young women play up to the candidate, flatter them, manipulate them, seduce them. I'm not excusing Nut -- he obviously did his part, and Callista also must know well his history of philandering. She was not the first. But she was "one of them."
This is not good, and it just won't work -- which makes me very happy. Because -- it may come as no surprise -- I do not want Nut's campaign to be successful. I am overjoyed that 16 of his aides have resigned en masse.
Here's the problem. Callista starts out as "the other woman," and on top of that, she's putting her own interests ahead of Nut's. It seems that he was very willing to go along with her. But . . .
If you're trying to become the "First Lady," and you start out as the "Scarlet Lady," you don't help your chances by being the "Dragon Lady."It's not just being controlling and selfish and possessive -- it's giving Nut the image of being hen-pecked (I know that's an old-fashioned concept, but a lot of voters are old). And I don't think anyone, particularly right wing Republicans, would nominate a man whose wife has him wrapped around her well-manicured and expensively bejeweled finger, who calls the shots, and so alienates his staff that they all resign in a block.
I couldn't have asked for a better home-coming.
Ralph
More seriously -- about the inseparable bond, on shackle, or whatever, between Nut and Callista. I was "blaming" her for being afraid to leave him alone with "the help," as well as being a demanding w/b/itch.
ReplyDeleteBut if we look at Nut's history, he may indeed be the clingy one. Remember what I have pointed out before: not since he was in high school has Nut gone for even a day without either a wife or a mistress, sometimes both at once.
He married his high school teacher as #1; and he asked for a divorce from both #1 and #2 AFTER he had already proposed to the next one.
I'm not "analyzing" without a couch here; I feel very strongly about not making diagnostic pronouncement about someone I've never interviewed.
I'm simply reminding us of a bit of Nut's well-known marital chronology. Draw your own wonderments about what it means.
I had some of my Nut/Callista chronology wrong; and, much as I criticize others for inaccurate statements, I want to correct it.
ReplyDeleteCallista was not working for Nut's campaign when they had an affair. He was Speaker of the House, and she work for the Dept. of Agriculture.
But it was accurate that he had already asked Callista to marry him when he told #2 he wanted a divorce.
Nut's self-confident explanation of his entire campaign upper staff walking out on him:
ReplyDelete"There is a fundamental strategic difference between the traditional consulting community and the kind of campaign I want to run. We'll find out over the next year who's right."
George Will reacted to this on "This Week," saying that when you combine "egomania with in-discipline" then you get statements like this. Gingrich is discounting every traditional metric of what works in campaigns and saying that his way is right.
Will's estimate: "He'll find in in a WEEK who's right."
I think that George Will has captured Nut perfectly in that one phrase: "egomania and in-discipline."