Summarizes Molly Ball at the Atlantic:
Prior to running for president, Newt Gingrich had built a very good life for himself. The former speaker of the House of Representatives resided in posh McLean, Va., with his third wife, who enjoyed expensive jewelry and singing in church choir.
He ran a profitable empire of think tanks, wrote and co-wrote books of fiction and nonfiction, appeared on television as a commentator, and traveled the country giving speeches, basking in his role as GOP elder statesman. Inevitably, as he finished one of his fiery orations on the endless circuit of rubber-chicken dinners, local activists would come away starry-eyed, wishing this dazzling man, with his charisma, insight and seemingly endless ideas, would find it in him to run for president.
Today, much of that empire is in a shambles.
Indeed.
It really does make one wonder what he thought he was going to accomplish with this run (or, for that matter, what he thinks the endgame is going to be). Sure, in his more ego-driven moments he probably thought he could win the nomination and the White House, but surely there were some somber, cogent moments in there somewhere where rationality took over and he knew it wasn’t likely to end that way—although, perhaps not.
One suspects that he will be able to find a way back into media business and use that platform to reconstruct some of his empire. Still, the burning of bridges with Fox News Channel may have limited his easy return to that fold.
