Still, his restless mind commends him. He has the perspicacity and the gall to advance almost any proposal, and this is good. The country is in bad shape. The middle class is eroding and poverty is growing and jobs are going overseas and social mobility is frozen and American exceptionalism has gone to Europe and Washington is just plain stuck. We need ideas…

Mitt Romney adds nothing to the national debate, not so far anyway. If he’s the GOP nominee, we will get more of his nonsense about running a business — tell me what great president ever ran a successful business — and how he’s a job creator. With Gingrich, it would be different. He might actually challenge Obama to think hard, to be creative, to come out of his shell, to listen to someone other than Valerie Jarrett, to swing for the proverbial fences, to blow up a cacophonous tax code (what an awful noise it makes!), to take on the public-service unions, to end the war in Afghanistan sooner than later and . . . you get the picture.

Of course, if Gingrich becomes the Republican nominee, it’s incumbent upon him to lose. He’s an unscrupulous man, a one-car demolition derby, but if he goads Obama to unaccustomed bravery and other Democrats to rethink outdated liberal dogma (affirmative action, etc.), then he will have done his nation a great service. Take a bow, Newt. Then take a powder too.