The Occasional Observer

Jeffrey Goldberg has a fascinating article in the New Yorker on the current state of the GOP and its propects for retaining the White House in '08. Fmr. Speaker Gingrich figures prominently in the article, as a conservative Republican who is willing to address the credibility crisis the GOP has right now:

Newt Gingrich is one of those who fear that Republicans have been branded with the label of incompetence. He says that the Bush Administration has become a Republican version of the Jimmy Carter Presidency, when nothing seemed to go right. “It’s just gotten steadily worse,” he said. “There was some point during the Iranian hostage crisis, the gasoline rationing, the malaise speech, the sweater, the rabbit”—Gingrich was referring to Carter’s suggestion that Americans wear sweaters rather than turn up their thermostats, and to the “attack” on Carter by what cartoonists quickly portrayed as a “killer rabbit” during a fishing trip—“that there was a morning where the average American went, ‘You know, this really worries me.’ ” He added, “You hire Presidents, at a minimum, to run the country well enough that you don’t have to think about it, and, at a maximum, to draw the country together to meet great challenges you can’t avoid thinking about.” Gingrich continued, “When you have the collapse of the Republican Party, you have an immediate turn toward the Democrats, not because the Democrats are offering anything better, but on a ‘not them’ basis. And if you end up in a 2008 campaign between ‘them’ and ‘not them,’ ‘not them’ is going to win.”

Given the current mood around the country, is '08 a lost cause for the GOP? Newt looks across the Atlantic and sees reason for hope:

The only way to keep the White House in G.O.P. hands, Gingrich said, would be to nominate someone who, in essence, runs against Bush, in the style of Nicolas Sarkozy, the center-right cabinet minister who just won the French Presidency by making his own President, Jacques Chirac, his virtual opponent. Sarkozy is a transforming figure in French politics, Gingrich said, and he suggested that the only Republican who shared Sarkozy’s “transformative” approach to governing was, at that moment, eating a bowl of oatmeal at the McLean Family Restaurant.

“What’s fascinating about Sarkozy is that you have an incumbent cabinet member of a very unpopular twelve-year Presidency, who over the last three years became the clear advocate of fundamental change, running against an attractive woman”—the Socialist leader Ségolène Royal—“who is the head of the opposition,” Gingrich went on. “In a country that wanted to say, ‘Not them,’ he managed to switch the identity of the ‘them.’ He said, ‘I’m different from Chirac, and she’s not. If you want more of the same, you should vote for her.’ It was a Lincoln-quality strategic decision.”

Very interesting analysis. Romney, for all his stylistic differences with Bush (which are important given our one-inch deep political discourse), still offers praise for the job W has done. The only Republican candidate who has done what Gingrich is suggesting--putting himelf in opposition to the President--is Ron Paul. And the only real heavyweight who would have credibility as an anti-Bush voice, IMO, is Hagel, who might just be too loopy for the public to accept.

Gingrich, like Romney, is a very different person from the president. Where W likes to stay at arms length from cameras and the microphone, Newt loves to be front and center. Where Bush relies on his cabinet to help him frame the agenda, Newt seemingly has a new conservative proposal every day. But for all that, Newt (like Mitt) has supported the President at every critical juncture in the GWOT. The only points of criticsim have been of the, "he did a poor job executing the policy" kind. Meaning that "I would have done the same thing, but achieved a different result." While his executive confidence is refreshing, it's questionable that the voters will buy that assumption. Which leaves a candidate who's willing to say "the decision was wrong in the first place," in a powerful place this campaign season. Since Hagel's going nowhere, that must have Dems' chomping at the bit.