"Callista Gingrich’s hair is a fabulous shout-out to a mythic Washington."

WaPo headline for a Robin Givhan essay.

Ms. Gingrich was appearing at her confirmation hearing — she's nominated for ambassador to the Vatican — and her hair was "a perfectly styled chin-length bob with a side swoosh... controlled and proper and smooth."

Yes, but what is "mythic Washington" that has anything to do with Callista's surrealistic hair?

[H]er hair is being discussed because it manages to be both utterly unique and a marker of the kind of place that Washington... once believed itself to be but certainly is no longer.... a mythic Washington: a place of order and comportment, stuffy but reliable, self-conscious, mannered, impervious. And most of all, studiously dignified.

Is it so stuffy and sober? It's got that insouciant, elongated, extra curve...

Who has done that before while saying take me seriously? If Callista Gingrich were a liberal, wouldn't Robin Givhan be enthusing about how modern and impudently playful it was?

Oh, but it's hard, it "does not move or swing a la Anna Wintour’s timeless golden bob."

It's a stiff hard prong, like a horn, for the lady who's going to represent us in the Vatican. If you wanted to say it poked at convention in a delightful new way, you could.

That side swoosh made me think of all the talk of the significance of upward curves in Seurat paintings like "Le Cirque" and "Le Chahut":

What does it mean, the upward curve? I remember reading (long ago) that Seurat thought it meant happiness and joy, but I can't confirm that. Rereading this post, I'm tempted — by the horned devil? — to make the Freudian leap and say it signifies the erect penis. And that's not inconsistent with happiness and joy. And perhaps that's why it's disconcerting — to Givhan and others — that it's so stiff and hard.

"I don't think it's an automatic yes, I think you have to think through what does he think the job involves."

Said Newt Gingrich, asked on "Fox News Sunday" if he'd accept an offer to serve as Trump's running mate.

If he can convince Callista and me that it's doable and that it’s serious and we would, in fact, contribute I think we would be very hard pressed not to say yes. 

Chris Wallace nudged him to do it because the Vice President residence "isn't bad."

Speaking of VP prospects on the Sunday shows, there was also Sherrod Brown on "State of the Union." He was hilariously blindsided. Jake Tapper played a clip from an ad he put out in his 2012  campaign for reelection to the Senate:

Live-blogging Day 3 of the GOP Convention.

6:04: Settle in. It's going to be a long night. Are you looking forward to anything other than Rubio and Romney?

6:30: A Mormon invocation, from Ken Hutchins, thanking God for "the beauty of the heavens and the earth... a lasting testament of Thy love for us."

6:43: "Once again, it's morning in America!" announces Connie Mack, gesturing exuberantly.

6:47: Another story of an immigrant who started a business. It's the American Dream, Mack tells us. "It's morning in America," he repeats, and the tribute video to Ronald Reagan begins.

6:53: "Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone," says the  voice of the departed President, "I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence, rather than your doubts. In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal. America's is." And so, we hear the theme of the night: hope, dreams... the very words that won the last election for the other party.

6:59: It's Callista and Newt Gingrich, here to liken Romney to Reagan and Obama to Carter. It's like 1980 again, you must understand, and it's striking how President Carter and President Obama both wrecked out hopes and dreams within only 4 years. They're speaking in this slow, methodical way. I think this would have been livelier without Callista, but she's bringing the woman... and the beauty... very crisp beauty.

7:03: Hispanics: We love you! We really, really love you. Your values are Republican Party values. Hard work. Entrepreneurship. The American Dream. The successful Hispanics have been Republican.  Identify with success, o Hispanic people! [This was a video. I'll post it here when I find it.]

7:06: It's Craig Romney, the youngest Romney son. He speaks at some length in Spanish, and it sounds fluent to me. He's really handsome too, by the way.

7:12: Jeb Bush comes out and speaks his first few words in Spanish. I'm picturing the Democrats suddenly scrambling to put more Hispanic in their convention.

7:40: Grant Bennett, a friend and fellow church member of Romney's, explains the work Romney did within the LDS Church. This is beautifully stated, explaining a life of service to others. Meade says, "Community organizing!" And I say, "No, he was ministering to individuals." There was no organizing.

7:47: An array of church members testifying to Romney's religious ministry. [This is very touching, parents with children who suffered and died.]

8:37: More testimonials from businesses that were helped by Mitt Romney and from Olympians who benefited from Mitt's leadership. This section is well-done. I'm not particularizing it, but let me say I'm impressed by it.

9:03: Clint Eastwood!

9:10: Clint's talking to an empty chair representing Obama. Oh, I don't think it's possible for him to do that to himself.  

9:13: We own this country... Politicians are employees of ours... When somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go. Note the echo with Mitt Romney's famous: "I like being able to fire people."

9:14: Marco Rubio! About Obama: "Our problem is not that he's a bad person. It's that he's a bad President."

10:42: And now, Romney has given his speech. It was a Romney speech.

"No, no, that is not a marriage," said Marianne Gingrich.

Was she talking about marriage between a man and another man or a woman and another woman, which, of course, Newt Gingrich excludes from the definition of marriage? No, she was talking about a marriage between a man (Newt) and a woman (her) in which the woman does not have the man all to herself but will share him with another woman (Callista, who accepted the concept of sharing):



ADDED: If the embedded video doesn't work for you, go here.

UPDATE: Just watched the "Frontline" interview. I thought it was nothing (aside from the strange allegations against Marianne having to do with meeting with an arms dealer and asking for $10 million). Basically, it's the same story we always knew. He had an affair, and then they got divorced. I don't really understand her motivation to go on camera to say that. She seems like a very grim and sad woman.

Styles of the prospective First Ladies.

A nice array of the wives of all the GOP candidates who have wives.

I'll just say I like the Ann Romney short coat/long jacket look, Mary Kaye Huntsman has a lovely figure, Callista is bizarre in her conservatism, Anita Perry needs a little more coverage, Karen Santorum looks most like the women I see around town in Madison, Wisconsin, and Carol Paul looks like the women you see everywhere in America.

The reason why every not-Romney candidate but Bachmann has had a surge.

We're experiencing the Santorum surge now, and it seems that the conservatives looking for a way to stop Romney have simply converged on him after the sequential failure of their efforts to converge on Perry, Cain, and Gingrich. But why not Bachmann? She won the Iowa straw poll back in August. If she was that strong then, why was she denied her turn for a surge?

There was her blunder talking about the HPV vaccine causing mental retardation, but that was a single incidence of loose talk, relaying an anecdote, and I doubt if most people even remember that.

I think what has held her back is her husband. A candidate's spouse matters. It was recently reported that when Newt Gingrich was divorcing his first wife, he (supposedly) said to a close friend: "You know and I know that she’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a president." Now, Gingrich is on his third wife, and she's relatively young and pretty (though she strikes many people as weird). But Gingrich's decline coincided with some intense focus on Callista. I'm not saying his decline was all about Callista. He had his surge, and that drew all sorts of scrutiny and criticism, and there was plenty to bring him back down. Yet the wife — and the wives — have mattered.

My question is: Why did Michele Bachmann get passed over in the sequence of surges? And my answer is that once people saw what her husband Marcus was like, they excluded her from consideration. For a female candidate, the spousal question is quite complicated. We expect the candidate herself to live up to some of the expectations we have — consciously or unconsciously — of the wives of male candidates. But what of the husband? Who will be the first First Gentleman in history? What's he supposed to be like? The role needs to be invented. And it couldn't be invented with the raw material that is Marcus Bachmann. Once people noticed him and tried to imagine him as the first First Gentleman, they ceased to conceive of her as a possible President.

If you don't remember how Marcus Bachmann burst into the national consciousness, refresh your recollection:

LAT article on Mitt's marriage illustrated with a photo of Ann Romney seemingly biting some other man's nose.

Let's close in on the photo:



It's generally a lovely picture of the couple, and it's nicely new, taken this week. Is there some journalistic rule against photoshopping a ludicrous stray face part out of a picture? It almost looks photoshopped in. It's completely absurd to have that nose — it looks like Bob Hope's nose — right between her teeth. And the intimacy of her connection to her husband is mocked by wedging a mystery man into the tiny space between them.

The title of the article — "Spotlight on Romney's marriage casts shadow on Gingrich's past" — seems designed to distract us from the distinct charm of Ann Romney's story...

... how her husband comforted her in her "hardest hour," when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (telling her he didn't care if they ate cold cereal every night for the rest of their lives); and how he used to call home during his business trips when she was a young mother of five sons to say, "Remember, Ann, what you are doing is more important than what I am doing."

He teases her publicly about her "fiscal discipline." She corrects him aloud when he misspeaks at his events. They hold hands. They exchange tender glances. The chemistry between them is unmistakable.

Unmistakable even with a strange man's nose and grimace stuck in and the accusation — read the whole article — that Mitt Romney is calling attention to his marriage in order to make voters think ill of Newt Gingrich, the admitted adulterer on his third wife, a woman young enough to be his daughter.

Things that feel inconsistent with the notion that Gingrich is the frontrunner for the presidential nomination.

1. His people keep emailing promos for cheesy merchandise like this:



The authors of "Rediscovering God in America" are — purportedly — Newt and Callista Gingrich. Seriously, why would you rediscover God with them? Okay, because I'm blogging about it, I clicked through to the website. I see that these books "featuring the photography of Callista Gingrich" come "with an autographed certificate of authenticity." Does Callista certify that she does her own photography or just that these really are the books they purport to be? When was the last time you held a book in your hands and wondered hey, is this book really this book?

There's also a DVD in the boxed set:

Take a walk through our Nation’s Capital with Speaker Newt Gingrich and his wife, Callista Gingrich. From the National Archives to Arlington National Cemetery, this film illustrates the importance of our Creator to our nation’s founders and their successors. Based on the New York Times bestselling book, Rediscovering God in America, this documentary reminds us that America is indeed “One Nation Under God.” Produced in partnership with Citizens United.

Citizens United even!  This would be a great gift for freaking out a lefty friend. Lefty or righty — does anyone really want to "take a walk" with Newt and Callista and listen to their pedantry about "the importance of our Creator"? These 2 characters were having  adulterous sex and lying about it while he was leading the House of Representatives getting Bill Clinton impeached for having sex with Monica Lewinsky and lying about it. And now they're raking in $34.99 payments for pontificating about God. God and government. Ugh. Seriously, though, this is a kickass Christmas gift for your left-wing atheist aunt.

And "Sweet Land of Liberty" is perfect for the kids of your left-wing friends and family. This book is supposedly written by — "[a]uthored by" — Callista Gingrich (who has the sense not to claim to have painted the pictures).

I guess I admire their entrepreneurial spirit. These items really are pretty cheap. I'm sure they do lure a lot of perfectly nice people into deciding that thinly veiled political propaganda would make for nice Christmas presents. But this guy is supposed to be leading the pack right now, running for President. We're all looking at him. And this merchandise is insipid and embarrassing.

"Perhaps Callista thinks unchanging style evokes consistency and reliability?"

"Unfortunately, her fashion choices evoke Barbara Bush Senior, and a bygone era."

The cat claws are out for Callista, whose own hyper-manicured claws "are folded neatly over her lap, a posture she frequently assumes." She "assumes her signature rigid stance." If she's in any position, it is — in Daily Beast talk — a position she assumes. Because she's just that kind of person, now, isn't she? So entitled.

"From her perfectly coiffed bob to her bespoke power suits, Callista Gingrich possesses a style that evokes a woman who wants to mirror her husband’s wealth and power — and lacks any singularity." She assumes her rigid position — her stance — next to the man, mirroring him, wearing a version of his suit, lacking any personality of her own. Lacking any "singularity." Are you kidding? She's the most distinctive-looking person on the political scene! The bright colors, the sharp edges, the signature hair.

"Heaven forbid she looked slightly mismatched. Mrs. Gingrich seems pleased with herself." Seems pleased. Seems. We're being fair. We don't purport to know what goes on inside the lady's cranium. But check out her "stiff... bob" !"Will we ever catch her with a hair or button out of place?" She's so controlled. That control freak. That rigid woman. Assuming her position. Existing without singularity. Pleased with herself as she mirrors the man.

All the quotes go to a slide show at The Daily Beast, which is based on this article — "Newt Gingrich's Wife Callista's Prissy Style Problem" — by political fashion writer Robin Givhan, though Givhan's name does not appear at the slide show. Givhan's tone is different, analytic and intermittently empathetic:

Mrs. Gingrich’s style has evolved from that of a young professional who looked as if her closet might have been an outpost of Ann Taylor to a woman who has set out to exude wealth, control, and exceptionalism.

Exceptionalism... is that anything like singularity, which the slide show told us she had none of.

The unspoken rule of political style: do not tempt audiences into pondering how much mirror time one requires—or indulges in—on a daily basis. ...

In contemporary fashion, as well as in politics, style is supposed to look effortless. When effort is apparent, it is damning. It doesn’t matter if a woman takes hours for full hair and makeup, as long as the result looks as if it took only 15 minutes. Imperfection is a mark of modern sophistication, confidence, and youthfulness.

See how Givhan folds in larger cultural issues?

In the broader, contemporary culture, however, her closely tailored blazers, precisely applied makeup, glossy nails, and hair that never requires a glancing adjustment all exude an excruciating prissiness. Her many style tics—stacked one atop the other—read as code for narcissism, self-indulgence, and brittle self-absorption.

Givhan isn't really criticizing Callista here at all. She's telling us about ourselves and how we understand the trappings of beauty and fashion.

Callista Gingrich stands out because, like a woman of the 1950s and early 1960s, she is dressing beyond her years. Youthfulness is not her obsession. Control and order are.

I'm shocked to read that Callista is only 45 years old. Perhaps she's dressing old to erase the appearance of an age gap in her marriage to a man who's pushing 70.

Style can be used to break down barriers. It can show stature and authority and also exude commonality.

But when it is too perfect, too formal, too stiff, it sets one apart. In Mrs. Gingrich’s case, style implies a social hierarchy that, far from exuding empathy, reflects the haughty airs of noblesse oblige.

Givhan's final judgment — that Callista looks like she lacks empathy — lacks empathy.