It looks like Newt Gingrich is experiencing some of the problems that go along with having an inexperienced and disorganized campaign:
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was greeted with a standing ovation when he was announced at a barbecue.
Too bad the former House speaker wasn’t around to see it.
He was inexplicably missing, and his absence forced the event’s moderator to ask awkwardly, “Can we check and see where the speaker is?”
It was just one in a string of clumsy, head-scratching events staged by the Gingrich campaign since the Republican primary moved to South Carolina, a state that the candidate says he must win if he wants a shot at the nomination.
The entire article is hilarious — check out J. C. Watts’ immensely-relieved “I think I see the speaker’s bus!” after filling time for half an hour, or Gingrich fielding questions on a conference call that had no callers because the number was invalid.
It reminded me of this passage from Theodore White’s The Making of the President 1960 in which a broke Hubert Humphrey goes on the air for a half-hour telethon with no money for pre-screening of calls. The results are predictable:
Then came a rasping voice over the telephone, the whining scratch of an elderly lady somewhere high in the hills, and one could see Humphrey flinch (as the viewers flinched); and the rasp said,
“You git out! You git out of West Virginia, Mr. Humphrey!”
Humphrey attempted to fluster a reply and the voice overrode him, “You git out, you hear! You can’t stand the Republicans gitting ahead of you! Why don’t you git out?” …
He had barely begun to answer [another] question when a clipped voice interrupted on the party line of the caller, “Clear the wires, please, clear the wires this is an emergency!”
Humphrey attempted to explain that they were on the air, they were answering questions to a TV audience.
“Clear the wires, clear the wire at once, this is an emergency,” repeated the operator on the party line. …
The lesson, as White points out, is “that TV is no medium for a poor man.” Nor is campaigning a medium for a disorganized man, Newt.
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