The Truth About Marianne Gingrich
By John H. Richardson
In the spring of 2010, I began reporting on a story about Newt Gingrich and the empire he'd built since his spectacular fall from the speakership, from elective office, and from polite society, twelve years before. I was doing the piece because I was astonished at the news that I'd been picking up that however unlikely it might have sounded at the time, and in spite of all, Newt Gingrich was planning to run for president in 2012. In the ensuing months, I interviewed Gingrich several times, and found him to be as facile and slippery as ever.
Frustrated at this, and feeling as though I needed someone to tell me the truth about such a fascinating and vaguely human character who had been such an important actor on the political stage for decades, I sought out Gingrich's second ex-wife, Marianne, whom he had left ignominiously after carrying on a six-year affair with a member of his staff. Marianne and Gingrich were married for eighteen years, throughout his rise from a backbencher in the minority to the speakership, and she had been both his closest confidant and most important advisor. She hadn't spoken to anyone since the divorce. She didn't speak up for ten years and refused dozens and dozens of interview requests, including ours. She said she'd speak up because she didn't think he should be trusted with the presidency, given his emotional instability. Is it so inconceivable that she might actually have decent motives?
Her portrayal of Gingrich was devastating, complex, nuanced, and compassionate. She held nothing back. And we continued talking after the piece was published, a conversation that continues (more on that in a moment.)
And so it's kind of funny, actually, seeing news that you broke a year and a half ago being blasted out on the Internet as some kind of world exclusive. Why, it's as if we're all amnesiacs. All last night and into today, alarmed headlines have blared across the masthead of the Drudge Report.
SHOCK CLAIM: Newt moved for divorce just months after she had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.... Or: Gingrich Lacks Moral Character to Be President, Ex-Wife Says... Bitter Marianne Gingrich Unloads, Claims Newt Wanted Open Marriage... Or: Adviser: Marianne 'very bitter'...
All of this — the "open marriage," Gingrich leaving his wife shortly after her diagnosis with MS, etc. — appeared in the September 2010 issue of Esquire.
Follow those links and you arrive at breathless stories about Marianne Gingrich's "first television appearance," which will be aired tonight on ABC. She will say that Gingrich "lacks the moral character to serve as President" because "his campaign positions on the sanctity of marriage and the importance of family values do not square with what she saw during their 18 years of marriage."
The real problem is that the marriage dispute is actually the most forgivable part of Gingrich's behavior. Love makes fools of us all, etc., and liberals who believe in parole and rehabilitation really should think at least once before they snicker at the religious folks who have decided to believe in Newt's remorse for his past behavior. But the story Marianne told in Esquire went much, much deeper — a story of wildly erratic behavior that went back to the very first night they met, full of manic ups and downs, secrets and betrayals and passionate reconciliations. More important was his behavior in Congress, the ferocious and manic drive that accomplished much (for better or for worse, depending on your point of view) but collapsed in a breakdown so severe his own Republican peers had to force him out of power. Or the story about his midnight visit to Bill Clinton, immediately followed by Gingrich backpedaling on the Clinton impeachment. Or her ultimate conclusion about his financial ethics and the truly grotesque amount of lobbying he has done since he left Congress — that he chose corruption.
But focusing on the divorce makes it easy to dismiss Marianne as just a bitter ex-wife — the marital version of "disgruntled employee." This would be really unfortunate.
After I wrote the story, I ended up spending more time with Marianne while we explored a book project. She picked me up at the airport at midnight, I stayed at her house, we spent a lot of time together. And I really think what I wrote in the article is true — sure, she's angry that he cheated on her and divorced her for a much younger woman. Who wouldn't be? But she still has a genuine affection for their life as a couple, for Newt and Marianne — for the hope and love of their early years and for the morning-in-America conservative dream they shared. She took care to never say a bad thing about him that wasn't also accompanied by a good thing.
In the time I spent at Marianne's place, we talked mostly about their early days. It wasn't for publication, her guard was down, and we'd developed a comfortable level of mutual trust, so I think I got a pretty unvarnished version of the truth — unvarnished enough that she freaked out when I showed her the pages and decided she couldn't go forward with the project. I would be breaking my promise to her to reveal much of what she said, but the takeaway was more positive than negative: a troubled, idealistic, spontaneous, sweet, affectionate and loving Newt Gingrich.
This is the real story, which is almost the opposite of the one that's hitting the media now. (This happens so much on television and the Internet. Last week, I did a TV interview about another of my profile subjects, Ron Paul, and they wanted to focus on the racist newsletters he didn't write twenty years ago instead of the nutty ideas he says on TV every day.) The real story isn't that Gingrich committed adultery — an act every bit as offensive as sodomy to the actual Bible, if not to modern Christians — over and over and over again. The real story is that Newt Gingrich is so deeply conflicted and strange, so erratic and unreliable, so scheming and secretive, that he's way too much like a character out of Dostoevsky than a politician should ever be.
Read more:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/marianne-gingrich-interview-6641643#ixzz1jybXXk45
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/marianne-gingrich-inter view-6641643
