Watch out, Newt! It's SUPER-WOLF!!!
Once again Ethics Alarms finds itself in the sad position of calling conduct heroic that should be routine. Unfortunately, however, competent and responsible broadcast journalism isn’t routine, and if I was looking for a bold and quick-witted journalist to exceed the standard practice, it certainly wouldn’t be CNN’s plodding, timid and often befuddled Wolf Blitzer. Last night, however, as moderator of the latest GOP candidates debate, he did what few journalists ever have the confidence or courage to do: he challenged a politician on an absurd and hypocritical statement.
And yes, I confess…if Wolf fell slightly short of true Ethics Hero status by a couple of points, the fact that the politician involved was New Gingrich the Unethical put him over the top. If that be bias, so be it.
Gingrich, against all odds and logic, has thrived in the quest for the GOP presidential nomination by entertaining red-meat conservatives of short attention spans and faulty brain function by serially attacking the debate moderators and, by extension, the hated left-biased national media. Note that insulting the media has less than nothing to do with being qualified for leadership; indeed, a President must have a good relationship with the news media to be effective. But the lowest common denominator GOP voter wants to see spunkiness and anger—you know, like they got from Donald Trump— because such voters can’t really keep track of more germane matters like honesty, consistency, trustworthiness and sound policy sense. Newt’s repeat stunt of tongue-lashing debate moderators, usually when they had done nothing wrong, has been disturbingly effective.
This time, however, a moderator was ready for him. When Blitzer asked Mitt Romney about Romney’s tax and financial disclosures—a completely reasonable and expected inquiry, since this had been prominent in the news for days—Gingrich went to the well again. “This is a nonsense question,” Gingrich barked. “How about if the four of us agree for the rest of the evening, we’ll actually talk about issues that relate to governing America?”
Now, I almost fell out of my chair at this. Gingrich had been beating the “Romney is a rich guy who doesn’t understand the real troubles of normal Americans, just like John Kerry” drum for weeks, and now he had the utter gall to say this? Still, that’s a sociopath for you: since they are incapable of shame, they excel at gall. I expected Newt to get away with this ploy yet again…certainly with a certified marshmallow like Blitzer. But no!
“Mr. Speaker, you made an issue of this, this week, when you said that, ‘He lives in a world of Swiss bank and Cayman Island bank accounts,'” shot back the CNN anchor. “I didn’t say that. You did.”
Thus hitting Newt’s battleship.
Newt, understandably shocked, muttered an uber-lame excuse that he was “perfectly happy to say that in an interview on some TV show. But this is a national debate,” essentially confirming that he says whatever he can get away with whenever he can get away with it. If only John King, in the last South Carolina debate, had the wit to respond to Gingrich’s attack about his question on the former Speaker’s ex-wife’s allegations by saying, “Sir, as Speaker you relentlessly attacked President Bill Clinton, arguing that his personal conduct showed that he had neither the character nor the moral character to lead the nation. Your wife’s allegations go directly to the issue of your fitness and trustworthiness, and it is reasonable that you should be asked to address it here.”
Journalists have an obligation to stop allowing Gingrich to make them, rather than the issues and his character, the focus of his appeal to voters. Finally, Wolf Blitzer showed how it’s done. Responsible, competent, fair journalism. What a concept!
Wolf Blitzer. My hero!
Ethics Alarms 
Jack, if you have previously called Newt a sociopath, I don’t recall it. But when I saw it in print this morning, I realized how accurate that diagnosis was. But it made me wonder — are politicians (and possibly also corporate sharks) pre-disposed to being sociopaths, and how many others are lurking in plain sight? And where does the line between mere pathological liar and true sociopath begin to blur? The road of pathological self-interest seems not to be the road less traveled these days. Or am I just painting things with too broad a brush? Some days, it just seems to be the truth. I just have the nagging worry that Newt is not the only sociopath in and/or running for public office. Scary.
You have the relationship backwards. Just like everyone else, sociopaths go into fields that fit their talents and desires. So long as the media doesn’t do their job and/or the populace doesn’t pay attention, Politics is the perfect job for a sociopath:
* Power.
* Effecting positions and emotions you don’t believe leads to advancement.
* Your “bosses” are don’t know anything and are easily smooth talked.
* You only need to convince half your bosses that you’re not evil, and half of those people are for you no matter what you do.
And there is this: sometimes sociopaths make effective leaders. Both JFK and FDR have all the markers of sociopaths. So did Thomas Jefferson. But buyer beware.
I think you are right on JFK and FDR but off on Jefferson. He has some of the traits but but not all and most inportantly was capable of love as he loved his wife, children and grand children very much. He WAS a machivellian manipultive SOB though.
Enlighten us on TJ’s history as a family man. He may have loved his white children and grandchildren. But did he ever get aroud to manumitting the children he had with slave Sally Hemings? I don’t know, but hope so.
If TJ loved anyone, that probably takes him off the true sociopath list. He then just falls into the flawed human being bucket.
You and I finally agree on something.
Its well documented that he loved his wife and family deeply. One the reasons he may have started sleeping with Sally is that he missed his wife so much and she , being her half sister , resembled her a great deal and reminded him of his late wife.
He did allow some of them to runoff , basically freeing them but not truely doing so.
Love is hard to assess from the outside. Jefferson betrayed too many friends to count—my favorite was when he agreed to watch over a friend’s property, then sold it and took the money himself. If he wasn’t a true sociopath, he was too close for comfort.
I’ve never heard that story and my family and the Jefferson descendants have been close going back to when he was still alive. I count two if his Fifth Great grandsons as two of my closest friends.
Yet it is true—it’s in several biographies.
I will have to check that. If being a sociopath gives us the Declaration and Jeffersons genius then that’s a price I’m willing to pay.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/14/why-some-psychopaths-make-great-ceos/
Related Perhaps?
Right on, Jack, and right on, Wolf: right about Gingrich (I have met many [right] people on the right, and in more than one sense, he ain’t right).
I sympathize with friends who claim that, if Nasty Newt becomes President, they will emigrate to Canada.
But I won’t join them — the climate up there is too bad for my arthritic joints.
Definitely Wolf’s best performance since getting skunked on Jeopardy (google it, it’s worth it)
I agree the Newt exhibits the clear characteristics of a sociopath and that there are many highly-functioning sociopaths in society. The greatest danger for the public is when they are out of control and no longer able to use the sociopathic traits that made them successful in their chosen fields for good instead of evil. It is a not-so-well-hidden secret that many sociopaths are drawn to fields like medicine – particularly highly specialized surgical fields. The stories about neuro, cardio and ortho surgeons with “God complexes” abound for a reason. Often these sociopaths are able to function well in their professional lives but destroy the lives of those unfortunate enough to be part of their personal lives (wives, children) and many have been charged with spousal abuse and murder of their spouses – much to the shock of the public who, prior to their arrests, saw them simply as brilliant healers. The problem for the public, and for the women who marry these sociopaths (who tend to be men) is that they are very good at pretending to be something they are not until they begin to implode. So a woman can marry one and not know until she is well into a marriage that she has married a monster. And the public can often be fooled into following a tyrant until he shows his true self.
In the case of Newt, however, it is abundantly clear that he has let the world know who he really is. Why any rational, intelligent, educated person would cast a vote in his favor is, quite simply, beyond my comprehension.