Former U.S. Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean were the featured speakers at a political-themed luncheon sponsored by Dentons Tuesday, providing insight from both sides of the aisle into the 2016 Presidential race and some of the issues facing the candidates. Two more appropriate speakers would have been difficult to find, as both men have run popular, if eventually unsuccessful, Presidential campaigns of their own – Dean in 2004 and Gingrich in 2012.
The two men, both of whom joined Dentons in the past year as part of the firms’ newly expanded Government Affairs division, began their moderated discussion by talking about the front-runners for 2016. Dean, a former DNC chair, was predictably effusive in his praise for Hillary. When Newt brought up her ‘layers’ of scandals, from Benghazi to deleted emails to the Clinton Foundation, Dean was quick to dismiss the stories as concoctions of the GOP and the media, the same line used by the Clinton campaign itself to varied levels of success in recent months.
Gingrich, unsurprisingly was unrestrained when talking about the GOP and its chances for retaking the White House. He waxed poetic on the roles of frontrunners Ben Carson and Donald Trump, calling the former the 2016 version of Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum – the embodiment of the evangelical portion of the Republican party. Trump on the other hand, the former Speaker said, is the perfect candidate for the ‘Kardashian era’, the social-obsessed media and public that changes focus with the day’s latest tweets. He was careful to note Trump’s recent slide in national polls that show Carson as having surpassed him, saying that tonight’s GOP debate could be very telling for the future fortunes of the real estate mogul, who has not been forced to debate from anything other than a position of power thus far. For former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the favorite of many of the establishment-connected heavy hitters in the room, Newt said that he needs to see a ‘coherent passion’ in order for the campaign to pick up much needed traction.
The two politicos differed again when discussing the state of politics in the country as a whole. In shades of many a 2012 interview, Gingrich ventured into deeper waters by pointing to political and racial divides in the country deepening more and more, while Dean limited that notion to the older Fox News/MSNBC consuming base, saying that the younger generation on both sides of the spectrum was becoming more and more united around common concerns.
A fire alarm went off toward the end of the session, but both speakers were unfazed. Apparently dealing with Congress or the rigors of the campaign trail have Gingrich and Dean well prepared for life’s twists and turns, a welcome trait as they move into their new roles at the world’s largest law firm.
