Newt Gingrich wants to work with Democrats - San Francisco Gate

As I noted in my Sunday column, the GOP presidential pack has three candidates who haven’t served in office for five to 13 years. Newt Gingrich hasn’t been House Speaker since 1999.

Saturday morning while he was in town for the California GOP convention, comrades Marinucci and Garofoli and I sat down with Gingrich. I asked him if he thought that, having not served in office for more than a decade, he thought he might be “rusty.” Gingrich answered: “No, not particularly.”

And: “There’s a difference between, ‘Am I a little rusty?’ and ‘Do I think I’m dealing with a different world than we had in 1994?’ Sure. Of course we are. One of the things I would want to do shortly after the election is schedule every single Democrat in the House and Senate for one-on-one meetings, to find out whether or not there’s a coalition to be built, which you know you can’t build through the leaders. The leaders are the most partisan partisan part about the system. And yet you know that there are a lot of members, if members are faced with four years of working with you, there are a lot of individual members who would be glad to sit down and say, ‘Gee, this is my pet project. This is what I’m most worried about, this is what I want to get done, and you might be able to build bipartisan coalitions’.”

Does he think Congress is more partisan now or less? Gingrich answered that it’s “much more partisan.”

Indeed, Gingrich told me he thought he could find Democrats who would join his plan to end civil service.

Who knew Newt was so anxious to work with Democrats. But when you think about it, it makes sense. After all, it’s Republicans who forced Gingrich to resign as Speaker. At the time, he denounced their “cannibalism.” Gingrich frequently talks up his cozy relations with Bill Clinton and how he was able to work with Democrats on welfare reform and the budget. Quoth the Newter, “Everything I passed, Bill Clinton signed.” Note Gingrich did not say: Everything we passed.

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Gingrich: Romney Speaks French, Just like John Kerry (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | Newt Gingrich is attacking Mitt Romney for speaking French in a new ad. However the Daily Caller is suggesting that this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black, claiming that Gingrich is fluent in French as well.

The accusation comes at the end of the ad, in which Romney is compared to two other Massachusetts pols, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, who tried to run for president and failed. It has Kerry publically speaking French and then Romney doing the same thing. Hence Romney equals Kerry in foreign language fluency.

The suggestion is made that Gingrich must be a French-speaker as well, due to the fact that his doctorial dissertation on education in the Belgium Congo cites numerous French language documents. Gingrich also interviewed a number of people in Belgium. French is one of the major languages in that country.

One supposes that Gingrich could have employed a translator, thus escaping the taint of being fluent in the French language. One wonders what the fuss is about, however.

To be sure Kerry seemed to speak French as a means to buttress his haughty, aristocratic mien, setting himself up as someone who suffered from Paris envy and not someone in touch with ordinary Americans. That included Cajun people from Louisiana who speak a kind of French. There is no evidence, however, that Romney has tried to put on airs just because he can parlez vous.

It is not a necessary requirement that a president of the United States be multi lingual; he would have plenty of people who can make him understood to President Sarkozy, for example. However it would be intriguing to have a president, like Jon Huntsman, who can speak Mandarin, the main language of China. Farsi and Arabic might also be useful.

Indeed, there has been more than one multi-lingual president of the United States. According to the Monticello website, President Jefferson could speak Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish and, of course, English. His acumen in foreign languages seems not to have hurt his ability to be president.

Gingrich is -- once again -- over reaching in his zeal to cut up Romney.

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