Newt promotes himself on ABC's This Week and poisons America's political dialogue.
Why on Earth would ABC's This Week continue to give former Speaker Newt Gingrich a seat on a panel of "analysts?" Make him a guest to be interviewed? Fine. He is clearly no analyst however. He has initiated a strategy to fill the current GOP leadership vacuum for his own personal gain. Not even the barest fig leaf is offered of service to the public good over his personal ambition. So what does he add to the discussion? We get populist attacks on the Bush and Obama administrations' economic strategies, an attack on "judicial activism" because courts find constitutional balance in gay marriage and incendiary suggestions that the US should spend blood and treasure policing African waters against local pirate thugs so we won't be wimps. His desperate search for a political foothold (i.e. fund raising) skews the discussion toward the incendiary.
I know its old news. Fox News is the product of this strategy. Karl Rove raised it to an art form. So-called "think tanks" of the political right urge its practice. Newt Gingrich is only a recent full-time participant in his campaign to regain personal political power. Main stream newspapers and networks regularly surrender their political objectivity to participate in the game. Make no mistake. The strategy to conflate honest political dialogue with shameless self promotion of personalities or positions poisons the public dialogue and the quality of political discourse in America.
We need to hold news outlets responsible for conflating political analysis with shameful self promotion. This includes the promotion of TV personalities such as Beck and Hannity or political seekers such as Newt Gingrich or the promotion of networks, blogs or other publications. The political health of the Republic, especially in challenging times, demands the distinction between political promotion and political analysis. Satire (i.e., political cartoons, Daily Show, Colbert) is one reliable tool in making this distinction. A healthy political community and intellectual integrity require a more rigorous line be drawn and vigilantly maintained between honest political dialogue and shameless self promotion.