The Truth As Spoken By Newt Gingrich

The most eloquent words I heard from a politician yesterday came from Newt Gingrich. Actually the words weren't even spoken yesterday. I listened on my iPod to an archived speech he gave to the National Press Club on August 11, 2007. Like his politics or not, he's right on the money about how elections these days are terribly presented to us. It's just sound bites and "Gotchas!"

Here are a few excerpts from that speech (full text here):

"For the most powerful nation on Earth to have an election in which swiftboat veterans versus National Guard papers becomes a major theme verges on insane. I mean, it’s just — and to watch those debates I found painful, for both people. They’re both smarter than the debates."

"And so we now have a system that is overly focused on money, overly delegated to technicians, and in which candidates are held to a rigidity standard that is very dangerous, while their answers are held to a sound bite and 30-second standard, which is just frankly absurd. What’s your answer on Iraq, in 30 seconds? What’s your answer on health care, in 30 seconds?"

"And on top of that, you have the challenge of the news media, which unfortunately was taught by a cross between H.L. Mencken’s cynicism and Theodore White’s wonderful writing but focused far too much on politics as a horse race, and on an unavoidable desire for “Gotcha!” And what does that do?

It turns the candidates into rigidity, because if a candidate says something in March of 2007, and in the course of the campaign they learn something fundamentally different, and they mature, and they change, and in August or September or October, they adopt a new position based on having grown during the year, they will promptly have flip-flopped."