Why Gingrich Needs to Find His Inner Victim

Newt Gingrich has always been a hard guy to feel sorry for, given his blustery and often bilious political opinions and an indulgent personal life marked by three marriages and a chilling indifference to the dire circumstances of his jilted spouses.

As David Frum put it, "It's not the infidelity. It's the arrogance, hypocrisy, and -- most horrifying to women voters -- the cruelty. Anyone can dump one sick wife. Gingrich dumped two."

And yet Gingrich's latest explanation for his tendency to stray from his vows -- an attempt to soften his image with the public ahead of an expected run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination -- doesn't seem to be helping, either.

"There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate," Gingrich told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network on Monday.

The former House speaker's effort to explain (he did not excuse) his love affairs as stemming from his love of country was, of course, shark bait for pundits and humorists, with the award for best satire going to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. He brilliantly skewered Newt's passionate patriotism with a breast-heaving riff: "Sure, I noticed her purple mountain majesties as soon as she walked in the room. I mean, who didn't? Believe me, in a sweater, those purple mountains sure were majestic."

So what should Gingrich do to try and improve his likability -- if that's possible -- ahead of his expected campaign launch, which is now shifted to May?

Research suggests that Gingrich should try to make himself into a martyr of sorts, or find some way to cast himself as a victim.

For Gingrich to do that, he can't just portray himself as a heroic figure whose good public deeds outweigh his personal failings in some cosmic balance sheet.

Kurt Gray, a social psychologist and the director of the Mind Perception and Morality Lab at the University of Maryland, and Daniel M. Wegner, a professor of psychology at Harvard, write in the current edition of "The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology" that sinners who adopt a "hero strategy" of emphasizing their good deeds to overcome negative perceptions about them were likely to suffer a backlash instead of an improvement in their standing.

On the other hand, Gray and Wegner cited three studies that found that adopting a "victim strategy" was effective and "consistently reduced blame" in the eyes of others.

"In fact, people have a hard time even remembering the misdeeds of a victim," Gray wrote in a March 7 column at "Science and Religion Today." "There's something about victims that seems to be a nonstick blame coating."

Gingrich could certainly use some of that Teflon. Whether he can get it is questionable.

Gray explains that while people like to believe they judge the world by distinction of good and evil, in fact we tend to divide up the moral world into "agents" and "patients." The agent is one who does the deed, whether good or bad -- a rescuer or a thief, for example -- while the patient is the one who is rescued or robbed.

People tend to sympathize with "patients," that is, victims, rather than "agents."

In other words, a man of action like Gingrich is always likely to be seen as more responsible and more culpable than a more passive person, or someone who is perceived as having suffered, even if that victim is blameworthy in some other respect.

Consider Donald Trump, also a thrice-married potential GOP contender, who last week beat Gingrich to the punch when he told The Des Moines Register that "one of the reasons I was divorced is because I worked very hard."

"And, you know, that's a good reason," Trump continued.

Well, it may actually not be such a great reason, when it comes to voters.

It doesn't help Gingrich when there are striking counterpoints to his own narrative, such as when Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign, embroiled in an adultery scandal, announced Monday he will not seek reelection in 2012, saying "there are consequences for sin." Ensign is leaving Washington after having an affair, but Gingrich is trying to return to the place where he broke his vows.

So what can Newt do to portray himself as a victim?

He could pray for a Gingrich clone from the left to pester him much as he bird-dogged Bill Clinton in the 1990s with investigations and impeachment hearings that helped to make the Adulterer-in-Chief a popular and even pitiable figure.

So far, however, Gingrich has been focused on communal victimhood, arguing -- as he did again in his CBN interview -- that "our Judeo-Christian civilization is under attack" from "radical Islamists" and what he called "a secular, atheist, elitism," both of which "would like to eliminate our civilization if they could."

That does not seem to strike the kind of personal note most voters can connect with, however.

Gingrich has also been relying heavily on the story of his 2009 conversion to Roman Catholicism and his affecting and oft-stated belief, also repeated to David Brody, that there is a loving God of whom he has asked, and received, forgiveness.

The problem is that while God is said to rejoice more over one repentant sinner than 99 righteous folks (and God knows there are plenty of those on the campaign trail), Gingrich has to convince voters to accept him. And they're a much tougher audience than the Almighty.