Eye of Newt

Only a matter of time

NEWT GINGRICH, that card, has done it again. The comedian and Fox News contributer has made another joke, and we don’t mean another presidential run.

Once upon a time, Newt Gingrich could safely be taken seriously, because he all but ran the nation’s capital as speaker of the House of Representatives and foil to Bill Clinton. And the speaker they called simply Newt could hold forth on any number of topics, given his background as a history professor.

Which is how we know he has to be kidding today. Or at least he was earlier this week when he told a reporter that Kamala Harris is “probably the worst vice president in American history.” But there are so many to choose from!

Any history professor will tell you that time lends perspective on these matters, and pundits have been declaring the “worst” in history since this country was founded. Fact is, the first president of the United States surely heard the rumors spread around by Thomas Jefferson about his being a traitor to the spirit of ‘76. That is, 1776. President Washington had patience in abundance. And needed it.

And surely the current speaker of the House of Representatives is the worst in history, like the ones prior, and the ones to come. The worst Congress is always the current one. The worst group of black robes on the United States Supreme Court is always the group that sits today. Whenever “today” is.

But now the joker/former speaker/ history expert has taken aim at Vice President Kamala Harris. She’s probably the worst in American history, he says. He’s so funny. Even if unintentionally.

She’s worse than John Nance Garner? He who famously said the vice president’s office wasn’t worth a bucket of warm spit? Or something. (The statement may have been bowdlerized.) However he put it, that was the only thing he’s remembered for today. That, and being replaced on the next ballot by a man named Henry Wallace.

You have to go all the way back to 10 months ago to find the last worst vice president in American history. Wasn’t Mike Pence just cover so the Christian right could support a vulgarian in office? How does he sleep at night?

Wait a minute. We thought Dick Cheney was the worst vice president in American history. Wasn’t he the real decider in the Dubya administration? (Tell it to Scooter Libby.)

No, no, no. It was Al Gore who was the worst veep in the country’s (short) history, if we remember. He couldn’t even win his home state of Tennessee when it was his turn to run for president.

Oh! We forgot about the worst vice president before Al Gore—namely Dan Quayle, who was run out of national politics because somebody spelled “potato” wrong on a cue card.

Kamala Harris the worst vice president in American history? Would that include Spiro Agnew, who had to resign, clearing the way for his boss—Nixon—to resign later? What about John C. Breckinridge, who served as vice president of the United States and then in the Senate until he joined the late and unlamented Confederacy as a general, then joined the Davis cabinet as secretary of war. And didn’t a vice president named Burr shoot and kill a founding father named Hamilton?

TO ANOINT a sitting vice president the “worst” in history is to anoint too soon. And what about all the empty suits who’ve come before, but who did nothing much remembered in office—which is why Professor Gingrich criticizes Kamala Harris. What about Henry Wilson or Garret Hobart?

Schuyler Colfax! How could you forget him?

Yes, being a man of letters, and holding a doctorate in history, Newt Gingrich must be putting one over on us. He’s pulling our leg. He’s teasing. For surely he knows that it will be years before historians figure out if Kamala Harris was a good, bad or indifferent vice president. And if she goes on to higher office one day, that will help her resume with the scorekeepers.

But thanks to Professor Gingrich for the joke. It helps to add a little levity to the news these days. To quote another man of letters who watched the American scene with some interest:

“Here politics is purged of all menace, all sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of a campaign with one’s ribs loose, and ready for King Lear, or a hanging, or a course of medical journals.”

—H.L. Mencken, “On Being an American”