You’ve got to admire the Romney folks for putting out that memo listing the various historical figures that Newt Gingrich has compared himself to over the years. It’s a pretty nifty dig at an opponent, even if it didn’t net Mitt a win in South Carolina.
Now, I know Newt and I have had words before about his historical comparisons, but I’m prepared to let bygones be bygones. Both he and I are Georgians, after all, and when I was but a wee lad I even lived in his district, so you could say we go way back. I’m prepared to take him at his word that these really are the people he sees himself in.
Well, to say I’m “prepared” is sort of revisionist history on my part. ((Newt and I share so many loves.)) I have to admit, I originally planned this post as a point-by-point analysis of Newt’s self-declared historical analogues, but where would that get us? Who knows what Newt thinks these people are famous for, much less what he thinks he shares with them? I surely don’t. Here’s a guy who thinks Braveheart planted a flag in the ground and yelled “Charge!”, rather than “Steady. Hold. Hold! HOLD! NOOOOW!!”–what Mel Gibson says when I play my DVD. ((And it wasn’t a flag, it was a sword. Sheesh.)) If Newt buys his history books at the same place that sells these special Reverse Director’s Cuts, ((At the Newtoplex, Greedo shoots first; Tyler Durden was dead the whole time; Rosebud is the name of a hooker; truly, it was the airplanes that killed the beast; and, frankly, my dear, Rhett did give a damn.)) his Henry Clay may turn out to be the inventor of calculus and his Pericles the first discoverer of America.
So I’m not quite prepared to take him at his word, more just resigned to it. In lieu of my fisking out historical ripostes, please accept this, my artist’s rendering of Newt’s professed self-image: ((My Photoshop Kung Fu is not the strongest,† but try to match the parts to the people †† if you feel up to it.
† This post took me an embarassing amount of time to complete, most of it spent trying in vain to cut out Woodrow Wilson’s pince-nez.
†† Not as interesting a task as I’d hoped, as whatever else he sees in them, Newt has a fondness for bland suit-wearing white guys with little in the way of iconic paraphernalia.))
All hail our next president, the Viking Duke Dr. President Prime Minister Rabbi Speaker Ronald Woodrow Abraham Margaret William Wilbur Henry Moses Pericles Orville Wallace Thatcher Clay Wellington Wilson Wright Reagan Lincoln de Gaulle, PhD. Long may they reign.