Coffee Is For Closers

Newt Gingrich is taking an awfully cavalier attitude towards running for President, and he's being rewarded for it by the media. Rather than, say, campaigning for it and actually picking up the phone and asking for some money, Gingrich is just going to turn it over to an assistant and see what shakes. And I'm not kidding — this is what American politics has been reduced to.

Yes, there are plentty of people running for president, but I'm not exposed to their bad decisions unless I go looking for them. Every time Newt Gingrich gets a bad idea it becomes a national media event. Gingrich is still riding high on 1994 and the media continue to encourage this kind of behavior. Whatever happened to the days when people who didn't really run for president didn't get any attention?

Pledges are not the same as dollars, but I'm still not clear on why Gingrich feels like he can't do the asking himself. If he's too busy so seek PromiseDollars, how is he going to have enough time to run for President? If you want to put together $30 million dollars in pledges in 3 weeks, why wouldn't you make it a big deal that you're going to reach out to the disenchanted Republicans and deliver them to the promised land?

No. That isn't Gingrich's style. Apparently he is so much cooler than everyone, he can't be bothered to do anything. No debates, no campaign, nothing. He is, essentially, outsource the very measurement of interest about his candidacy.

Well, as far as I'm concerned, Gingrich is embarrassing himself and being embarrassed by the rest of his field, except for Thompson. Thompson seems similarly lazy, although at least he seems to be occasionally firing someone himself. He isn't even a guy I would ever consider voting for, and he's not on my side, but the sheer condescension by Gingrich is just maddening. From now on, let's make it official: Gingrich doesn't get any coffee, because coffee is for closers.