What You See -- an Observation on Newt G.

With physical beauty being such a subjective concept when it comes to human beings, by being "in the eye of the beholder," the usefulness of it, aside from aiding in sexual attractiveness (purely for reproductive purposes, of course!) is always up in the air when it comes to drawing any solid conclusions.

Nevertheless it's easy to think that the things that Newt Gingrich's mirror have to say about him are going to weigh heavily against his denying B. Obama a second term as President -- or at least they should -- should the Republicans wallow their way into offering up the Ging Thing as their candidate.

Whether we want to accept it or not, the perception of a country is heavily influenced by the various external aspects of its chief executive, since those are the handiest and often the only indicators that are generally available to us. But it's not unlikely that those outer features can be taken as true manifestations of a person's inner workings. So would Newt Gingrich supply the kind of picture by which Americans might want their country to be perceived first and foremost?

I don't see how it can be denied that one of the main reasons that B. Obama gained the approval of a majority of the voters in the 2008 elections was the sleek, smooth, affable, and relatively young picture that he presented and thus transferred to the nation as a whole, with not one unnecessary pound or other feature on him. He seemed almost machine-tooled to create the greatest air of optimism, and that must've been at the heart of why the Norwegians so quickly handed him the Nobel Peace Prize. This, after all, is a world in which believable optimism is in very short supply, and therefore it has a value all its own. And despite the determined subsequent Repub efforts to grind him down by whatever means possible, Obama still presents that same aspect, though he is slightly grayer and he looks a little thinner around the jaws.

Here was a man who didn't have the foolish and congenitally uninformed look of GWBush, nor did he exhibit the puffy, eternally put-upon biliousness of J. McCain. And McCain knew that the personal contrast between him and Obama was striking , and it was in his way, and that was why he leaned so heavily in the other direction and for his running mate chose a piece of pure eye candy, of a vintage that was just right for her to be especially appreciated by older men -- a 44-year-old woman named Palin, though it turned out that just past her exceptional looks was a sheer, deep drop to a state in which nothing she said deserved even a fraction of the constant sparkle of her smile.

In contrast Gingrich looks like exactly what he is: a piece of puffy, paunchy, crusty, rusty, and dusty, waddling bad old news. The abiding meanness of his spirit and the numerous sins of his past are testified to by the inwardly collapsing, "black hole" structure of his face and by the bleak narrowness of his eyes. Even before he opens his mouth (which offers just endless torrents of the same), he doesn't at all reflect a vibrant America that is still in its early years and is eager to accept change and to move forward with the rest of the world in the advance of civilization. Instead he presents the sourness of a longtime prison guard who is dead certain that the inmates have still not been punished enough, and he feels that he's just the man to inflict more and more painful injustices upon them, regardless of whether they are innocent or guilty.

What a great day it would be for the U.S. if his campaign -- and indeed those of all the other Republican candidates -- could go the way of Herman Cain's effort and be suspended. And while we 're at it, that would go many times over for that party itself. That development would offer the best chances we have to avoid meeting something close to the unspeakable fate that the Germans swallowed whole, seventy-odd years ago.