TheSequitur.com Editorial Board
March 19, 2007

Considering a presidential bid, Newt Gingrich recently tested the waters with an admission of marital infidelity during the period of former President Bill Clinton's impeachment. Newt Gingrich, who was speaker of the house during Clinton’s impeachment, played a key role in bringing charges against the president.

This Board fully realizes that Clinton's impeachment stemmed from allegations of lying under oath. Having offered that caveat, we believe that politicians who claim the high moral ground deserve the repercussions of their immoral actions.

We believe that politicians who claim the high moral ground deserve the repercussions of their immoral actions.For instance, while preaching from his family values pulpit and crucifying Clinton based on his personal morals (or lack thereof), then-Speaker of the House Gingrich notified his second wife by phone of his intent to divorce her in order to pursue a relationship with a congressional aide.

Gingrich has now gone on the record admitting to the very kind of behavior he derided Clinton for in a media whirlwind that culminated in the impeachment of a president.

This incident is not isolated; Gingrich has established something of a history of so-called immoral behaviors. In 1981, Gingrich served divorce papers to his first wife, his former high school geometry teacher, while she was hospitalized for cancer treatment.

Gingrich is hoping to clear the air up front, just like several other candidates in this beta version of the Gingrich was riding front and center, mounted on a moral high horse spewing aspersions like Zeus casting lightning bolts from Mount Olympus.2008 election. From Giuliani’s marital infidelities to Obama's teenage drug use, financial conflicts of interest and cigarette smoking, there is a pattern of beating investigative journalists to the punch by airing own dirty laundry before it can be exposed. This is fine and good, and it may lead to an atmosphere where politicians are even more forthcoming and present themselves in a more honest manner, especially regarding skeletons they feel they cannot forever hide in the closet.

But Gingrich's case is a little different. While he apologized for actions many people believe are immoral, he did it during one of the most divisive and political power grabs of the 20th century which, more than ironically, revolved around the same issue: adultery.

Gingrich was riding front and center, mounted on a moral high horse spewing aspersions like Jupiter Zeus casting lightning bolts from Mount Olympus. The Gingrich issue is about more than fault and apology – it is about contradiction and hypocrisy.

We cannot afford to have our liberties limited by politicians like Gingrich who preach the “do as I say, not as I do” school of thought.While his apology before Jerry Falwell (contradictory in itself, as most Baptists feel that a great difference between them and the Catholic Church is that they do not need a middleman for forgiveness) may keep Gingrich in favor with some Christian conservatives, it should not and will not make his indiscretions off limits to the press.

Here in the United States of America, we have the freedom to live our lives the way we want to - within reason. We cannot afford to have our liberties limited by politicians like Gingrich who preach the “do as I say, not as I do” school of thought.