Dogfight Page 3

  His staff was neither deep nor quick nor vast.

  He spent much time, reporters kept on noting,

  Promoting books in states that were not voting.

  An old harassment charge had come to light.

  (Cain, saying it was false, was not contrite.)

  By then, as Perry’s star began to fade,

  Election analysts were quite dismayed

  To read what they had never thought they’d read:

  The Herminator now was in the lead.

  The Pundits Contemplate Herman Cain

  I

  We’ve spent a month of this campaign

  In trying daily to explain

  The steady rise of Herman Cain.

  Through willingness to risk a strain

  In every muscle of the brain,

  We’ve laid out all we think germane

  To help the public ascertain

  Why Cain consistently can gain

  (Despite, some charge, a moral stain)

  Support that doesn’t seem to wane

  No matter how we all complain

  That thinking voters might ordain

  For Cain a four-year White House reign

  Is truly—to be blunt—insane.

  II

  So far, our work has been in vain.

  His ignorance is not what did him in.

  No, Cain’s campaign was sabotaged by sin.

  Complaints of Herman making intramural

  Advances, it came out, were in the plural.

  Outside the office he’d been naughty, too.

  The final straw, which hastened his adieu,

  Although this, too, the candidate denied:

  He’d had a little something on the side.

  Cain’s numbers in the polls began to slip.

  Then Herman Cain withdrew. He’d been a blip.

  The interest in him now had run its course,

  Except to see which horse he might endorse.

  Lamentations of the Late-Night Comics

  While Jimmy Fallon tears his hair,

  Bill Maher laments, “It’s just not fair.”

  Dave Letterman begins to pout.

  They’ve heard that Herman Cain is out.

  In common with his late-night peers,

  Jon Stewart comes quite close to tears.

  He’d much prefer a case of gout

  To hearing Herman Cain is out.

  “The man is threatening our jobs,”

  Says Leno, as he softly sobs.

  From Colbert tears begin to spout.

  He’s heard that Herman Cain is out.

  They pray together, on their knees:

  “Could we have Donald Trump back—please?”

  9.

  Newt Redux

  Cain’s nod might go to Gingrich, it was said.

  Yes, Gingrich, who had once been left for dead.

  Improbably, he’d lived to fight again—

  A star on Fox and even CNN.

  Debating, Gingrich pleased the hard-right bloc—

  They thought that he would clean Obama’s clock—

  Although the more religious folks all thought he

  Had, very much like Cain, been awfully naughty.

  (Both wives Newt cheated on and left were sick;

  He’d shown the moral standards of a tick.)

  By colleagues in the House Newt had been branded:

  He’d been the only Speaker reprimanded.

  He’d always found consistency constricting—

  A man about whom there was no predicting.

  So instantly the pooh-bahs fairly shouted

  That choosing Newt could get the party routed.

  Who knew if everyone had heard the last

  Embarrassment in such a checkered past?

  What lunacy could possibly induce

  The folks to choose a cannon quite that loose?

  With all his faults, which backers would admit,

  Newt’s great appeal was this: He wasn’t Mitt.

  Newt’s Surge

  The people who want anyone but Mitt

  Now say, in desperation, Newt is it.

  Yes, Newt’s astute—a crafty wheeler-dealer.

  His baggage, though, would fill an eighteen-wheeler.

  Republicans who knew Newt from the House

  Might call reporters whom they knew and grouse

  About how lame as Speaker Gingrich was,

  But, still, the grassroots voters were abuzz

  With sharp debating points that he would score

  And how he won the House in ’94.

  They loved it when he dissed the mainstream media

  While spewing facts—a live encyclopedia.

  They loved it when quite eloquent he’d wax

  Or wound poor Mitt with shrewd, sarcastic cracks.

  They brushed off all the right-wing commentariat,

  Which treated Newt like Judas—yes, Iscariot!

  (“Vainglorious,” said Will. To be concise,

  The Joe of Morning Joe said, Newt’s not nice.)

  “A brawler’s what we want,” the folks would cheer.

  “A guy who’ll gouge and maybe bite an ear.

  The hatred of Obama that we’ve felt

  Needs someone who will hit below the belt.

  Our animus requires someone bad—

  No matter if he’s sleazy or a cad.”

  New Hampshire’s largest paper had provided

  A lift for Newt, with whose campaign it sided.

  So now the polls produced another stunner,

  With Newt, the fourth un-Mitt to be front-runner.

  As he passed Mitt in polls, Newt said that he

  Was confident he’d be the nominee.

  Like Churchill or De Gaulle, he had been called.

  The men who run the party were appalled.

  The Perils of the Front-runner in a Horse Race

  Though Romney was leading right out of the gate,

  He’s also a guy some conservatives hate.

  But all other entries they managed to find

  Were scratched from the start or have fallen behind.

  So now they’ve decided that Newt is a whiz—

  The horse that they’re backing, corrupt as he is.

  Thus Gingrich, now galloping (though he’s quite husky),

  May make Romney look like the late Edmund Muskie.

  A Pause for Prose

  Callista Gingrich, Aware That Her Husband Has Cheated On and Then Left Two Wives Who Had Serious Illnesses, Tries Desperately to Make Light of a Bad Cough

  Newt looked into the room where Callista had been trying to nap. “I don’t like the sound of that cough,” he said.

  “What cough is that?” Callista replied. At that moment, she felt a cough coming on, but she managed to suppress it, emitting instead an extended beeping sound.

  “The cough that’s kept you in bed for the past three days,” Newt said.

  “It’s just a little cold, Newt,” Callista said. “I feel fine. Look at my hair; it’s still perfectly in place. This couldn’t be anything serious.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Newt said. “I hear there’s a lot of dengue fever going around.” He walked to the nightstand to get the thermometer.

  “I’m sure that I don’t have dengue fever, Newt,” Callista said. “A cough is not associated with dengue fever. I haven’t had the high fever. I haven’t had the characteristic rash.”

  Newt paused as Callista, trying desperately not to cough, made a sound that suggested a motorbike that won’t start. “Why is it that you know so much about dengue fever?” he asked. “Do you have reason to believe that you have dengue fever?”

  “Newt,” Callista said. There was a seriousness in her tone that made him stop short.

  “Newt,” she repeated. “You wouldn’t leave me if I had dengue fever, would you? It’s not a life-threatening illness.”

  “Well, in certain cases, complications can lead to … ” Ne
wt let the sentence hang.

  “Newt,” Callista said, in that same serious tone. “Have you found another?”

  Newt looked offended. “I am appalled that you would have the nerve to ask me that question. Asking that question is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.”

  “‘Close to!’” Callista said, sitting up in bed so abruptly that a single strand of her hair dislodged itself with a crack and fell over her forehead. “Did you say ‘close to’? Have you been cheating on me, Newt?”

  “I am leaving you, Callista,” Newt said. “I have found another. I am converting to her religion—Swedenborgianism.”

  “You’re leaving me for a Swedenborgian because you think I may have dengue fever? You’re leaving a sick wife for the third time? You’re converting for the third time? Won’t those evangelical wackos you’re trying to appeal to think that—”

  “No, they won’t,” Newt said, cutting her off. “It turns out that they don’t care at all.” As he strode from the room, he heard the sound of loud coughing.

  10.

  Carpet Bombing

  In Iowa, the caucuses unfold

  In weather that’s invariably cold.

  To listen to long speeches is your duty.

  And getting there could freeze off your patootie.

  The voters who are willing to go through

  This process tend to be those Christians who

  Are quite convinced that Jesus wants them to;

  To them the caucus seat’s another pew.

  On social issues these folks are the crew

  To whose views candidates must tightly hew.

  Those views are views that candidates rehearse

  So they don’t stray from chapter or from verse.

  Though Hawkeye demographics weren’t Mitt’s best,

  The caucuses were deemed a worthwhile test.

  But with that test not many weeks away,

  The un-Mitt Newton Gingrich still held sway.

  Debates, though, were where Gingrich had excelled;

  As caucus time approached, debates weren’t held,

  So Newt no longer was the grand enchanter,

  With show-off smart remarks and flashy banter.

  Then Romney’s PACs put into gear their plan,

  And carpet-bombing ads on Newt began.

  They searched out every way that Newt was sleazy.

  With Newt, of course, that sort of search was easy.

  His influence, ads said, had been for sale;

  He’d cashed in on a monumental scale.

  One focus of the ads’ sustained attack

  Was money he’d received from Freddie Mac.

  Newt Gingrich as Freddie Mac’s $25,000-a-Month Historian

  Lambasting pols who got too close to Freddie,

  Newt failed to say that he himself already

  Got Freddie payments that were large and steady.

  But Newt said that he’d never ever lobby.

  Could that mean when he seemed to do a job, he

  Was doing it as more or less a hobby?

  The heated jabs began to turn Newt blistery.

  He said Mac’s payments were for doing history.

  Why Freddie needed history’s a mystery.

  With millions spent on TV ads by PACs,

  Mitt stood apart from negative attacks—

  Though once, while momentarily speaking plain, he

  Referred to his opponent, Newt, as “zany.”

  (Rick Perry’s crowd outspent Mitt in the state,

  Not realizing it was just too late.)

  The ads kept on, no matter what the cost

  And soon the Gingrich polling lead was lost.

  In Iowa, in fact, poor Newt was trounced.

  A squeaker win for Romney was announced

  As votes were tallied from this quirky forum.

  And second place? Not Newt, but Rick Santorum.

  (He’d won, some pundits thought, a special bounty

  For taking his campaign to every county.)

  And Newt, in a humiliating fall,

  Had finished fourth, quite far beyond Ron Paul.

  Conceding, Newt was somewhat less than gracious.

  In fact, he sounded more and more pugnacious.

  Congratulating all except for Mitt,

  Whom he called moderate, well knowing it

  To be an insult worse than any other—

  Equivalent to slurring someone’s mother.

  For change, he said, just he could show the way,

  And Mitt could only “manage the decay.”

  Some thought that Newt, now short of staff and dough,

  Would have to face the facts and finally go.

  Would Thatcher quit? Would Hannibal take flight?

  The Newtster said that he would stay and fight.

  Newt Lays Into Mitt

  It’s “pious baloney.” Yes, pious baloney.

  What Mitt speaks, Newt says, is remarkably phony:

  His outsider citizen pose is all hooey;

  He’s hungered for office like Thomas E. Dewey.

  And what he had done all those years spent at Bain

  Was not create jobs but cause working stiffs pain.

  While Newt covers Mitt’s smooth exterior with blotches,

  Obama’s campaign staff just carefully watches.

  11.

  Stuck Again

  If Romney had two triumphs in a row,

  It might be hard denying him Big Mo.

  New Hampshire was a course Mitt liked to play;

  A rout, some said, could put this thing away.

  So, making the conclusion less foregone

  Meant one thing to competitors: pile on.

  Rick Perry (dead man walking) said the culture

  Of Bain resembled just one bird: a vulture.

  But Gingrich was best suited for this strife—

  Experienced in how to wield the knife.

  Newt’s script was gouge and butt; that’s how he’d written it.

  If he’d been near an ear he might have bitten it.

  An Explanation of Gingrich’s Ad Accusing Romney of Being Able to Speak French

  Big Mo is what Gingrich is desperate to stop.

  He talks of how Romney will flip and will flop—

  Yes, flipping and flopping in so many ways,

  He once was pro-choice and a friend of the gays.

  Mitt hides that in business, wherever he’d roam,

  Some innocent workers would lose hearth and home.

  There’s no way, Newt says, you can call Mitt a mensch.

  But what’s even worse is the man can speak French.

  Yes, being bilingual is truly de trop.

  The voters’ reward is for what you don’t know.

  Bilingual means speaking one language too many.

  We’ve voted for leaders who hardly speak any.

  Republican voters know one thing. It’s this:

  That ignorance rocks. (It’s sometimes called bliss.)

  So all Romney-huggers should undo their clench.

  Mitt Romney’s a menace: The man can speak French.

  Said Mitt: I’m not the man whom they’ve depicted.

  But many Romney wounds were self-inflicted.

  In talking and debating, one Mitt glitch

  Was sounding very much like Richie Rich.

  So often did this slip into his pitch

  ’Twas like a bite he simply had to itch—

  The ten grand he told Perry that he’d bet,

  His friendship with the NASCAR owners set,

  The way he values firing so much.

  His rivals said, “The man is out of touch.”

  Romney Says He’s Not Concerned About the Poor

  The remark about the poor immediately became cataloged in a growing list of awkward comments by Mr. Romney.

  —The New York Times

  His profile’s divine,

  His shoes have a shine;

  T
hey’re almost as shined as his hair.

  And voters ignore

  That seeking Mitt’s core

  Has failed because nothing is there.

  So Mitt’s way ahead.

  The pundits have said

  That Newt might be almost kaput.

  But Mitt still might lose

  If he puts those shoes

  Much more in his mouth with his foot.

  At retail politics, we’d seen no more

  Ham-handed candidate since Albert Gore.

  Without the common touch that was, say, Truman’s,

  Mitt didn’t seem quite comfortable with humans.

  His small talk with the citizens appeared

  To be not only very small but weird—

  Weird facts, with no connection, in his chatter,

  And questions to which answers didn’t matter.

  A Pause for Prose

  President Romney Meets Other World Leaders at His First G-8 Summit

  When Mitt Romney introduces himself to voters, he has a peculiar habit of guessing their age or nationality, often incorrectly. (A regular query: “Are you French Canadian?”)

  When making small talk with locals, he peppers the conversation with curious details … . Mr. Romney has developed an unlikely penchant for trying to puzzle out everything from voters’ personal relationships to their ancestral homelands … . Mr. Romney likes to congratulate people. For what, exactly, is not always clear.

  THE NEW YORK TIMES, DECEMBER 28, 2011

  The moment President Romney entered the room where the opening reception was being held, he was approached by a man who shook hands and said, “Je suis François Hollande.”

  “Are you of French Canadian origin?” President Romney said, smiling broadly.

  “I am French,” Hollande replied, looking somewhat puzzled. “I am, in fact, the President of France.”

  “Congratulations,” President Romney said. “Lipstick contains a substance made from fish scales.”

  Before Hollande could reply—in fact, before he could think of anything to say on the subject of lipstick manufacturing—they were approached by Angela Merkel, of Germany, who looked eager to greet the newest member of the G-8. President Romney peered at her briefly and then said to Hollande, “Your aunt? Your mother?”