I WANT THE GUY WHO’LL BRING A BAZOOKA TO A GUNFIGHT

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has dirt on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich that will keep him from ever becoming president.  "There is something I know," she claims.

I doubt it.  Every bad thing that could possibly be said about Newt already has been said.  Which is probably why he told her in response to "Put up or shut up."

Democrats usually spring an "October surprise." George W. Bush was arrested for drunk driving in 1976, they revealed four days before the election in 2000.  That converted a narrow, but clear cut, victory for Mr. Bush into a chad hanger.  It cost Mr. Bush the electoral votes of Maine, New Mexico, Iowa, Wisconsin and Oregon, Karl Rove said.

If the GOP candidate doesn’t have a skeleton in his or her closet, Democrats make stuff up, as they did with Sarah Palin.  But what lie could they tell about Newt that would be both credible, and worse than what’s already out there? 

Mr. Gingrich has had lots of experience dealing with personal attacks.  Republicans who are not used to them often respond poorly.  When Newt criticized his work at Bain Capital, Mitt Romney was defensive.  He has nothing to be ashamed of, but reacted initially as if he did.  

The downside for Mr. Gingrich is that most of the bad things that have been said about him are at least partly true:  

* His ego is enormous, even for a politician.  It’s made him a poor listener who treated disagreement on issues as a personal affront.  It made him susceptible to flattery.  "You’re a lot like me," President Bill Clinton told Newt during a private meeting at the White House in 1998, according to Mr. Gingrich’s embittered second wife, Marianne.  After that meeting, Newt never again criticized the president, she said.

* He’s reckless and erratic.  He pops off without thinking things through.  He throws out ideas constantly, but follows up poorly.  

* An erratic guy who doesn’t listen makes a lousy leader.  Newt got his lunch eaten in the budget standoff with President Clinton in 1995.  He was ousted as Speaker in a coup orchestrated by fed up conservatives in 1998.

* He cheated on his first two wives.  Newt was having an affair while he was overseeing impeachment proceedings during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.  If Mr. Clinton knew, blackmail may have been the real reason behind Mr. Gingrich’s reluctance to criticize the president.

* He stretches the truth, sometimes to the breaking point.  He backed Nelson Rockefeller for president in 1964, but implied in the debate Feb. 23 he’d supported Barry Goldwater. 

*He’ll modify his principles if offered enough money.  It’s hard to square the fees he got from Freddie Mac, one of the two government sponsored enterprises at the heart of the mortgage meltdown, with his professed devotion to free markets. And the ethanol folks paid him a lot to enthuse about their unconscionable subsidies.

I’m not a fan, for all those reasons.  But the vitriol spewed at Mr. Gingrich by fellow Republicans astounds me.  His critics have lost perspective: 

* His self regard is far less than President Obama’s, whose narcissism borders on pathology .

* He departs from the truth less often, and less brazenly, than does Mr. Obama.

* Another GOP candidate has flip-flopped more often than he has.

* As a horn dog, he’s a novice compared to Bill Clinton or John Edwards.

* He’s never violated the law in his financial dealings, which smells as clean as Pine-Sol compared to the loans and subsidies President Obama’s been giving to his contributors.

* He was a better House Republican leader than his predecessor (Dem Jim Wright) or his successor (Bob Who?). 

Republicans who harp on his shortcomings should also remember that in politics, Newt Gingrich is a brilliant strategist and guerrilla fighter.  Republicans never would have taken the House in 1994 if it weren’t for him.  

Newt is unelectable, say the same people who told us Mitt Romney had the nomination locked up.  His ample baggage would drag him and the party down.

Maybe so.  But baggage and all, Mr. Gingrich may be a better bet than any other candidate running.  National Review Editor Rich Lowry called Newt "the Republican Clinton."  He didn’t mean that as a compliment.  But Bill Clinton was as successful as you can get in American politics, despite a personal history that makes Mr. Gingrich’s seem tame.  

The general election will be ugly.  Barack Hussein Obama can’t run on his record, so he’ll sling mud by the carload.  Against this onslaught, a guerrilla fighter may hold up better than an Eagle scout.  Mitt Romney seems the sort of guy who’d bring a knife to a gunfight.  Newt Gingrich would bring a bazooka.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.