Nearly two weeks ago, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich released an attack ad called “The French Connection.” The ad — which targeted fellow candidate Mitt Romney — was broadcast to a fundamentalist South Carolina primary audience and attempted to draw parallels between the former Massachusetts governor and current Democratic Sen. John Kerry (also of Massachusetts). The first minute was moderately successful, thanks to exploding WordArt-generated titles and some husky narration, but the ad took a turn for the worse near the end. Stamped with Gingrich’s name — a man who has written or co-authored 23 books and holds a doctorate in modern European history — the ad proclaimed: And just like John Kerry, he speaks French, too.
Gingrich’s recent win in South Carolina can largely be attributed to such rhetoric. When CNN moderator John King now-famously began the Jan. 19 Republican debate with a question about Gingrich’s ex-wife’s allegations that he had requested an open marriage, the candidate attacked King and later chastised the “elite media.” Once again portraying himself as the man of the people, Gingrich, the former House Speaker, attempted to spin himself as a victim of what he described as the “destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media,” asserting as he did that “every person in here knows personal pain.”
Clearly, this “us versus them” mentality that Gingrich has (somewhat) successfully instilled in South Carolina voters is nothing if not ridiculous. No well-worn Washingtonian has any real measurable connection to middle America (save perhaps his or her hometown), and anyway, Gingrich’s act would hardly be successful without the constant foil of white-collar Romney. Romney, who had hesitated to release his tax records. Romney, who comes from the North. Romney — who speaks French?
The problem with Gingrich’s “French Connection” advertisement is not just that Gingrich is highly educated (as of 2000, 1.2 percent of Americans held doctorate degrees — sounds a little “elitist” to me) or that he spent time in France as a teenager or that Romney actually only learned French while doing missionary work abroad — no, the problem is bigger than that. For a legitimate presidential candidate to, in 2012, revert — in all earnestness — to an argument that’s pathos is rooted in closed-mindedness and a blatant fear of other cultures is heartbreaking. But what I find so disgusting about Newt Gingrich is that Newt Gingrich is smarter than that. He just doesn’t think his voting base is.
I would like to think Gingrich’s ad went relatively unnoticed by residents of South Carolina and that the publicity the web ad received had nothing to do with his win in that politically tumultuous state, but who knows for sure? What I do know is Gingrich, in the days just before the primary, suggested something he is far too educated to actually believe — namely, that knowledge of multiple languages is a weakness in a presidential candidate (of course, the connotations that French culture carries in working-class America are not to be ignored, but Gingrich’s ad does not suggest merely that French culture is elitist but that anyone who takes the time to learn another language — French or otherwise —is not to be trusted). He understood his audience, dumbed himself down to what he thought was their level and manipulated them. And aside from being counterintuitive to intelligent political debate, this practice marks Gingrich as far more dangerous than Romney. Because Romney’s rhetoric isn’t really fooling anybody. But Gingrich — well, Gingrich just fooled 40.4 percent of South Carolina.
Alex Leston is a freshman agriculture and resource economics major. She can be reached at leston@umdbk.com.
