I read the most fascinating story in the NY Times, about Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, and currently running for the Republican Presidential nomination, about his involvement with his 3 wives.
Gingrich, who went after former President Clinton for lying about his sexual hijinks with intern Monica Lewinsky, was—at that time –engaged in a six-year affair with an aide and cheating on his second wife, Marianne. Marianne was just interviewed on ABC, saying that Newt told her he wanted an “open marriage” that would allow him to be with both women. The aide became Gingrich’s third wife, Calista. (Newt’s first wife, by the way, was his high school geometry teacher, seven years his senior.)
Gingrich responded to Marianne’s recent interview, saying he never said any such thing to wife number two, and that he went after Clinton not for the sexual hijinks, but for lying under oath about the sexual hijinks. A too-fine distinction for the masses, perhaps. I think he went after Clinton because he was in position to do so: It was fun and it moved Newt’s chess piece along the board.
Gingrich was forced to leave the Speakership –and then resigned from Congress altogether —after allegations that he laundered charitable donations through his charitable foundation for his political action campaign fund, and that he had given the Ethics Committee inaccurate information. He was reprimanded and fined $300,000. Many saw it as payback for the vicious way he went after Democratic leaders.
Here’s the thing: I think Newt Gingrich has Asperger’s Syndrome, the mildest and highest-functioning form of autism. My first tip-off was when the NY Times story quoted from an interview Gingrich gave the Washington Post in 1989 in which he “estimated that the union [with his second wife Marianne] had a 53-47 shot of lasting.” This dispassionate application of mathematical odds to an emotional relationship is apparently typical of Asperger’s folks, according to the Asperger message boards.
Folks with Asperger’s can be brilliant, creative, out-of-the-box thinkers and strategists. They tend to be loners and can be cranky and abrupt ( rudely honest) but nonetheless can also be charming and are smart enough to pick up social skills by watching and mirroring other people’s behavior. I have been researching the syndrome for five or six months. Right now I am reading animal behaviorist Temple Grandin’s book “Thinking in Pictures: Life With Autism.”
Grandin says she indeed thinks in pictures and can see patterns more clearly and more quickly because the Asperger’s differently-wired brain isn’t slowed down by processing through the language center. Asperger folks tend to fixate on a couple of interests, issues, or goals. They know everything about what they are interested in, and persevere where a less fixated person might give up and move on to something less frustrating. Grandin believes Einstein; the philosopher Wittgenstein; the artist Vincent Van Gogh, and more recently, Microsoft chief Bill Gates have had Asperger’s. (I won’t say “suffered from” because many so-called Aspies are proud of their superior abilities and not that interested in deep interpersonal relationships. They are more turned inward to what they perceive as a rich interior life.)
Grandin says a person with Asperger’s has the best shot of developing a personal relationship with someone who has highly similar interests and maybe even Asperger's as well.
She writes:”I talked to one lady on the spectrum who met her husband at a science fiction book club. She writes technical manuals and he works in the computer industry. … Their idea of a wonderful romantic evening is to go to a really nice restaurant and talk about computer data storage systems.”
And perhaps that is why Gingrich turns his wives into unpaid advisors and sounding boards, making sure they are always with him, and that their prime interest is strategies for furthering Newt.
I think a member of my extended family has Asperger’s and that has motivated my research. My biggest question is: Can an Aspie really love you? My sense of Asperger folks is that they don’t have empathy because they can’t comprehend what other people are feeling. They have a hard enough time hearing other people and seeing other people’s facial expressions because they so easily experience sensory overload and can’t tune out extraneous stimuli the way “neurotypicals” can. So if a person can’t hear you, can’t see you and can’t “feel your pain,” can you have a mutually supportive, emotionally reciprocal relationship?
And, if Newt’s an Aspie (and even if he’s not), can he be an effective leader if he verbally beats adversaries to a pulp because he doesn’t “feel their pain?” and it seems like appropriate gamesmanship to him? He may have visionary policies and a sense of historical destiny, but can you lead a democracy if you are so detached from the feelings of the populace and so unwilling to acknowledge that your rivals have any redeeming qualities?
