Wha?

Apparently, Newt thinks this is a possibility worth investigating. This is from the Washington Times

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will begin next week to seek financial commitments from donors for a presidential-nomination bid, the Georgia Republican told The Washington Times yesterday.

If he can get pledges for $30 million over the next three weeks, he will join the Republican presidential-nomination race -- a prospect he had been downplaying until yesterday.

This was one of those mornings when I really wished my deskchair had a safety belt.

I get more than a few emails from people asking me to predict whether fellas like Gingrich or Gore will get into the race. I always punt on those questions. With only a few exceptions, I think it is impossible to predict whether somebody will run.

You'd think that complete and total unelectability would be a way to predict who will and who will not run. But you'd be wrong. Unelectability has failed to stop a whole host of candidates from tossing their hats into the ring. Case in point: Newt Gingrich is so obviously unelectable that you'd think he wouldn't be considering a run. But nope. You wake up one morning and read a sentence like this:

"Next Monday, Randy Evans, my friend and adviser since 1976, will hold a press briefing and explain how he intends to review whether it is realistic for me to consider running," Mr. Gingrich said.

He needs a friend to review his electability for him. Amazing.

Gingrich, as I said, is not alone. Lots of presidential candidates run despite obviously having no chance. Why is that the case? I've pondered this question for a while, and this is the theory I've come up with. It takes so much self-conceit to run for that office that one's perception of one's relation to others is much more likely to be skewed.

Think of it this way. To run for president, a pol needs to be able to look into the mirror and say with absolute seriousness, "Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt...me!" A pol with that level of self-conceit is much more likely to have a skewed sense of his own electoral prospects - and therefore much more likely to overestimate the support he could ever receive from the public. He is the kind of person who need friends to undertake a systematic review of his prospects. The rest of us could take one look at the last time we were in office - i.e. when we were run out on a rail - and recognize that there is no chance. But we'd never look in a mirror and say, "Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt...me!" At least not without laughing.