No, Infidelity Doesn't Mean Newt Would Be A Good President

Keith Ablow, a so-called psychiatrist who appears on Fox "News" saying silly things, is at it again. This time his claim is that Newt Gingrich's history of infidelity and wife-leaving ought to improve our estimate of how good a President he'd be. Essentially his argument is that hey, three whole women have been way attracted to this guy, so he must be pretty awesome. Now, let's set aside some of the basic logical problems here: I'm pretty sure a lot of people we just would not want as President have been pretty popular with the ladies. Ablow is using "number of wives" as a proxy for "number of women who've been deeply attracted." This is a mistake. I'd bet you anything that far more women have been attracted to Barack Obama throughout his life than were in Newt Gingrich's first fifty years of life, and probably in Gingrich's entire sixty-eight year life. The difference is, Obama decided he was interested in one of those women, and has stuck with that decision for the past nineteen years, while Newt's changed his mind twice (at the marriage level; who knows how many mistresses he's had). Why should deciding to take advantage of a higher proportion of the female opportunities offered him make us think Newt would be a good President?

(Not that it necessarily ought to make us think he'd be a bad President, although the specifics of the way he's left his wives does make it seem that he's kind of a jerk.)