Just a few days before the Iowa caucus was set to take place, Newt Gingrich could be found at a winery in Carrol, Iowa, lecturing sedated company on American history. At a time when his main Republican rivals were eliciting rallying cries from big crowds and trotting out flashy, formidable political allies, Gingrich was recounting droll historical anecdotes—like how George Washington imported Spanish sheep to improve his livestock—to a crowd of less than 200.

 
A long and tortuous road it has certainly been for the "Newt 2012" campaign for the Republican nomination. Few people could have predicted that it would meander into the Santa Maria Vineyard & Winery just days before the pistol officially fired on the GOP race. But the former Speaker of the House has proven a renegade in both political form and function, blazing a campaign trail every bit as erratic and full of gambits as his politics and incendiary rhetoric. And although Gingrich would place fourth in Iowa and New Hampshire, if his recent attacks on his rivals are any indication, his modest finish seems unlikely to subdue him.

 
In the funhouse mirror reflections through which we see primary elections, saturated with media hype and public vagaries, the status of a campaign is a very deceptive thing. Such was the case with Newt Gingrich this past summer, when an ill-conceived vacation and dereliction by many of his staffers left his campaign on life support. For most of the summer, he was no longer considered a legitimate candidate. Sideshow upstart Herman Cain and longstanding Texas governor Rick Perry seemed better bets to usurp the frontrunner-by-default Mitt Romney. But then in August, the debates came.

 
For the next few months, the GOP debates proved themselves to be astonishingly effective at cutting through the clouds of charisma, bravado, and other superficial methods of endearment that the candidates had been using to ingratiate themselves with the electorate. After many a presidential hopeful was damaged, if not felled entirely, through this televised gauntlet, Gingrich began to stand imperiously over his opponents. On the strength of his debate performances alone, the old hat had surged back to relevance in the primaries.

 
As much as a comeback of this magnitude seemed improbable, veteran pundits and political insiders should have seen it coming. After all, this is the man who became House Minority Whip 23 years ago, House Majority Leader 18 years ago, and spearheaded the "Contract with America" that helped Republicans reclaim the House after 40 years of banishment. Add all this up, and you get a man highly adept at not only executing in the spotlight but manipulating it to his advantage.

 
There is no better example of this savvy media courting than Gingrich's relationship with cable network C-SPAN. At the time of the network's inception in 1979, Gingrich was just beginning his career as a representative for the 6th Congressional District of Georgia. Gingrich's political career and the fledgling network streamlined perfectly. Although it has now expanded to provide coverage of the U.S. Senate, C-SPAN began by offering an exclusive glimpse into the proceedings of the House of Representatives. There was no congressman more poised to take advantage of this valuable new inroad to the American people than Gingrich. For much of the 1980's, Gingrich saw C-SPAN cameras as an opportunity to depict himself and his fellow conservative representatives as the righteous scourges of Democrats and their spending. C-SPAN became his platform for building conservative zeal in American households, one that helped him stage the historic 1994 Republican coup of the House. Perhaps just as important, he learned that a television camera thrives off of controversy and rhetorical conviction. Even when the chamber was virtually empty and little was at stake legislatively, Gingrich continued his invective on Democrats. There is no doubt that this rousing rhetoric inspired legions of conservative viewers. It was a grassroots campaign perfectly conceived for the television age. 

 
These years of experience under the media glare clearly prepared Gingrich for the debate circuit. His gift of elocution was on display for all of December, and will be on display for much of January. If we have learned one thing about the American people during Obama's tenure as president, it's that nobody likes a dry lecture. We value eloquence and clarity, certainly, but they must come with emotional wallop and unapologetic honesty. The violent rhetoric from the right that was a major media topic in early 2011 can be interpreted as an extreme version of this appetite for fierce, passionate voices on the political stage. Equanimity is simply out of fashion. That's why the man who believes that children from poor economic backgrounds should mop the floors of the schools they attend still poses the greatest threat to Romney. 

To be fair, it's not just verbal hyperbole and a penchant for conjuring surreal hypothetical futures (a socialist, Islamist America?) that have given Newt his longevity. Fortunately, his self-aggrandizing persona is buttressed by a sharp understanding of some of the major issues facing America today. He has proposed some aggressive plans for repairing the economy, including reducing the corporate income tax from 35 percent to a paltry 12.5 percent. He has also said that he would support other significant tax cuts, including a 50 percent reduction in payroll taxes and a complete abrogation of the capital gains tax. Generally, Gingrich seems focused on stimulating the economy and job growth through these sweeping tax cuts and small business incentives. 

In recent years, Gingrich has also discussed the increasing urgency for entitlement reform. Like many other politicians, he believes that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security (once considered the untouchable third rail of American politics), are no longer financially sustainable. He has suggested that these entitlements need restructuring so that they are driven and/or triggered by work and productivity. His attitude toward welfare and unemployment benefits has drawn perhaps even greater attention over the years. Never admired for his compassionate qualities, Gingrich believes that welfare and unemployment collection disincentivizes people from going out and getting jobs. Furthermore, he maintains that the horizontal model of welfare and unemployment traps people in a cycle of poverty. Better if the government institutes programs offering guaranteed employment and worker retraining. 

During the GOP primaries Gingrich has arguably been more adept in his magisterial grasp of foreign-policy issues. He has said that recent foreign policy administrations have been weak and that he would reinstate a stronger, more tenacious strategy. Not surprisingly, he has been critical of Obama's foreign policy approach, noting how Obama's attitude of diplomacy, appeasement, and the endeavoring toward disarmament have been met with apathy by potentially dangerous nations such as North Korea and Iran. Gingrich believes that America should handle rogue nuclear nations with far greater vigilance.

His criticism of Obama is not limited to foreign policy, either. He has been wildly outspoken in his disapproval with the direction of the Obama administration, even going so far as to call Obama's behavior as president "Kenyan and anti-colonial."   He nonchalantly refers to Obama as the leader of a secular, socialist machine.

Of course, this brand of heady aggression would provide a compelling counterpoint to Obama in a showdown in the fall. The stark contrasts between the two men would be on full display in a presidential race. For every practiced word and automated hand gesture that underscore Obama's imperturbable style, Gingrich would be ratcheting up the politics of personality in an attempt to depict himself as more experienced, more competent, and more audacious.

Alas, the presidential election is a far cry from the primaries, and does not have the same latitude for polarizing figures such as Gingrich. The same grandiosity that served him well in debates and media frenzies during the primaries would be his undoing in a general election that voters inevitably take far more seriously. Obama has always carried himself with humility and sobriety for the deluge of issues facing Americans in the past few years. Despite his political acumen, Gingrich seems capable of going on an eccentric four-year power trip in the oval office if he were to become president. The American people are not in a position to roll the dice with such an impetuous candidate. All told, it would be a tall and unlikely order for Gingrich to seriously compete with a formidable incumbent such as Obama.

Still, it's difficult to say how such a huge gap in leadership styles would play out in a presidential race: While it may not affect conservatives or staunch liberals, it could certainly impact independents and disillusioned Democrats. And what of that amorphous group known as the Tea Party? If Gingrich gets the Republican nomination, will they finally achieve the sort of political symbiosis with a candidate that seems far less likely if Romney were to triumph? These are obviously premature questions, as Gingrich has gone from campaign derailment to frontrunner to longshot all in the course of four months. But if Republicans are looking for an alternative to the sleepy predeterminism that defines the Romney campaign trail, they need look no further than the historian imposing his will on the Republican race. 

Author Bio:

Mike Mariani is an adjunct English professor and freelance writer.