Dogfight (5 page)
Authors: Calvin Trillin
Newt Gingrich as Freddie Mac’s $25,000-a-Month Historian
Lambasting pols who got too close to Freddie,
Newt failed to say that he himself already
Got Freddie payments that were large and steady.
But Newt said that he’d never ever lobby.
Could that mean when he seemed to do a job, he
Was doing it as more or less a hobby?
The heated jabs began to turn Newt blistery.
He said Mac’s payments were for doing history.
Why Freddie needed history’s a mystery.
With millions spent on TV ads by PACs,
Mitt stood apart from negative attacks—
Though once, while momentarily speaking plain, he
Referred to his opponent, Newt, as “zany.”
(Rick Perry’s crowd outspent Mitt in the state,
Not realizing it was just too late.)
The ads kept on, no matter what the cost
And soon the Gingrich polling lead was lost.
In Iowa, in fact, poor Newt was trounced.
A squeaker win for Romney was announced
As votes were tallied from this quirky forum.
And second place? Not Newt, but Rick Santorum.
(He’d won, some pundits thought, a special bounty
For taking his campaign to every county.)
And Newt, in a humiliating fall,
Had finished fourth, quite far beyond Ron Paul.
Conceding, Newt was somewhat less than gracious.
In fact, he sounded more and more pugnacious.
Congratulating all except for Mitt,
Whom he called moderate, well knowing it
To be an insult worse than any other—
Equivalent to slurring someone’s mother.
For change, he said, just he could show the way,
And Mitt could only “manage the decay.”
Some thought that Newt, now short of staff and dough,
Would have to face the facts and finally go.
Would Thatcher quit? Would Hannibal take flight?
The Newtster said that he would stay and fight.
Newt Lays Into Mitt
It’s “pious baloney.” Yes, pious baloney.
What Mitt speaks, Newt says, is remarkably phony:
His outsider citizen pose is all hooey;
He’s hungered for office like Thomas E. Dewey.
And what he had done all those years spent at Bain
Was not create jobs but cause working stiffs pain.
While Newt covers Mitt’s smooth exterior with blotches,
Obama’s campaign staff just carefully watches.
Stuck Again
If Romney had two triumphs in a row,
It might be hard denying him Big Mo.
New Hampshire was a course Mitt liked to play;
A rout, some said, could put this thing away.
So, making the conclusion less foregone
Meant one thing to competitors: pile on.
Rick Perry (dead man walking) said the culture
Of Bain resembled just one bird: a vulture.
But Gingrich was best suited for this strife—
Experienced in how to wield the knife.
Newt’s script was gouge and butt; that’s how he’d written it.
If he’d been near an ear he might have bitten it.
An Explanation of Gingrich’s Ad Accusing Romney of Being Able to Speak French
Big Mo is what Gingrich is desperate to stop.
He talks of how Romney will flip and will flop—
Yes, flipping and flopping in so many ways,
He once was pro-choice and a friend of the gays.
Mitt hides that in business, wherever he’d roam,
Some innocent workers would lose hearth and home.
There’s no way, Newt says, you can call Mitt a mensch.
But what’s even worse is the man can speak French.
Yes, being bilingual is truly
de trop.
The voters’ reward is for what you
don’t
know.
Bilingual means speaking one language too many.
We’ve voted for leaders who hardly speak any.
Republican voters know one thing. It’s this:
That ignorance rocks. (It’s sometimes called bliss.)
So all Romney-huggers should undo their clench.
Mitt Romney’s a menace: The man can speak French.
Said Mitt: I’m not the man whom they’ve depicted.
But many Romney wounds were self-inflicted.
In talking and debating, one Mitt glitch
Was sounding very much like Richie Rich.
So often did this slip into his pitch
’Twas like a bite he simply had to itch—
The ten grand he told Perry that he’d bet,
His friendship with the NASCAR owners set,
The way he values firing so much.
His rivals said, “The man is out of touch.”
Romney Says He’s Not Concerned About the Poor
The remark about the poor immediately became cataloged in a growing list of awkward comments by Mr. Romney.
—The New York Times
His profile’s divine,
His shoes have a shine;
They’re almost as shined as his hair.
And voters ignore
That seeking Mitt’s core
Has failed because nothing is there.
So Mitt’s way ahead.
The pundits have said
That Newt might be almost kaput.
But Mitt still might lose
If he puts those shoes
Much more in his mouth with his foot.
At retail politics, we’d seen no more
Ham-handed candidate since Albert Gore.
Without the common touch that was, say, Truman’s,
Mitt didn’t seem quite comfortable with humans.
His small talk with the citizens appeared
To be not only very small but weird—
Weird facts, with no connection, in his chatter,
And questions to which answers didn’t matter.
President Romney Meets Other World Leaders at His First G-8 Summit
When Mitt Romney introduces himself to voters, he has a peculiar habit of guessing their age or nationality, often incorrectly. (A regular query: “Are you French Canadian?”)
When making small talk with locals, he peppers the conversation with curious details … . Mr. Romney has developed an unlikely penchant for trying to puzzle out everything from voters’ personal relationships to their ancestral homelands … . Mr. Romney likes to congratulate people. For what, exactly, is not always clear.
T
HE
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
,
D
ECEMBER
28, 2011
The moment President Romney entered the room where the opening reception was being held, he was approached by a man who shook hands and said, “
Je suis
François Hollande.”
“Are you of French Canadian origin?” President Romney said, smiling broadly.
“I am French,” Hollande replied, looking somewhat puzzled. “I am, in fact, the President of France.”
“Congratulations,” President Romney said. “Lipstick contains a substance made from fish scales.”
Before Hollande could reply—in fact, before he could think of
anything to say on the subject of lipstick manufacturing—they were approached by Angela Merkel, of Germany, who looked eager to greet the newest member of the G-8. President Romney peered at her briefly and then said to Hollande, “Your aunt? Your mother?”
“This is Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany,” Hollande said.
Chancellor Merkel looked somewhat taken aback at being mistaken for Hollande’s aunt. When she had regained her composure, she said to President Romney, “I know you will have much to add on the question of the debt crisis in the euro zone, Mr. President.”
President Romney looked the German chancellor up and down. “I’d say you’d go about one-forty, give or take five pounds,” he said. “Am I in the ballpark?”
Chancellor Merkel, hoping she might have misunderstood the President, said, “I believe the future of the euro will dominate our discussions in the coming days.”
“The city that has more bridges than any other city in the world is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” President Romney said. “Congratulations.”
“Congratulations to Pittsburgh?” Chancellor Merkel asked.
President Romney thought for a moment. “No,” he said. “Just congratulations.”
Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, joined the group and introduced himself to President Romney.
“Are you of French Canadian origin?” President Romney said.
“No, I’m not,” the Prime Minister replied. “But I am Canadian.”
“The state stone of Michigan is the Petoskey stone,” the President said. Then, spotting a gentleman standing a few feet away, he asked, “Are you of French Canadian origin?”
“No, I am David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,” the man said.
President Romney looked at Cameron and then at Harper and then at Cameron again. “Brothers?” he said. “Cousins? Uncle and aunt?”
“No,” Cameron said.
At that point, the group was joined by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, of Japan. He and President Romney were introduced. “What are you—around fifty-five or sixty?” the President asked. “Am I close?”
“I am fifty-six years of age,” the Japanese Prime Minister said, rather formally.
“Yoshihiko sounds French Canadian,” the President said. “I don’t suppose you’re of French Canadian origin, are you?”
“No, I am not,” the Prime Minister said.
“Congratulations,” the President replied. “Saul Rogovin, of the Detroit Tigers, hit a grand-slam home run in 1950, and it wasn’t until 2008 that another Jewish pitcher hit a grand-slam home run.”
“Congratulations,” Chancellor Merkel said.
“Yes,” the others murmured. “Congratulations.”
Unstuck
So from New Hampshire, Mitt left bruised and battered.
But, still, he’d won—won big—and that’s what mattered.
The polls in Carolina showed that he
Was on his way to winning number three.
And Newt? The Newtster’d finished fourth again.
He couldn’t capture one vote out of ten.
Mitt’s team had thought that lack of cash might mean
That Newt would now retire from the scene.
That might have taken place except for this:
Newt through the years was not at all remiss
At cultivating wealthy people who
Might share with him a certain point of view,
And, conscious of the favors he might render,
Might also share some serious legal tender.
One Sheldon Adelson found in his heart
The urge to share five million as a start.
(The gambling dens he’d managed to expand
Had given him a lot of cash on hand.)
Adelson
(Sung by Newt Gingrich supporters to the tune of “Edelweiss,” from
The Sound of Music
)
Adelson, Adelson,
Your donations do cheer him.
We who root
For our Newt
Smile whenever you schmeer him.
Absent your vow
That you would endow
Newt, despite his clay feet,
Adelson, Adelson,
Newt would be back on K Street.
On this there was no way to be mistaken:
Shel Adelson had saved the Newtster’s bacon.
So Gingrich, fattened up with Sheldon’s cash,
Became the candidate who liked to trash
Poor Mitt for everything he’d done at Bain
That caused those simple working people pain.
Mitt called such talk a weapon of the left.
Then he himself increased the issue’s heft
When asked about his tax returns by saying
He’d rather not reveal what he’d been paying.
When finally he then released just one,
The damage, self-inflicted, had been done.
The Adelson donations had borne fruit:
A double-digit victory for Newt.
The certainty of Mitt had been debunked.
He hadn’t just been beaten; he’d been skunked.
From Iowa, another bubble’d burst:
A recount showed Santorum finished first.
So Mitt had not won three tests in a row,
But one, which left a long, long row to hoe.