Swagger.

One thing Gingrich has going for him is that he’s not afraid to hit Obama where he’s most vulnerable; namely, that this guy is the most ridiculous president we’ve ever had.

By ridiculous, I mean most easily susceptible to ridicule.

This is a chain-smoker who got into the White House with a “body man” in tow. Don’t even ask what a “body man” does. Obama’s mother-in-law lives in the White House with him. He plays golf incessantly, he’s incapable of communicating without reading that stupid machine, he can’t seem to present anything in the way of policy that doesn’t divide the American people along ideological lines and he comes off as the most arrogant ass ever to occupy that building.

Gingrich comes off as an arrogant ass at times, too. But nothing like Obama. Gingrich might be more of a smartass than an arrogant ass, when he’s at his best. And people generally like a smartass – so long as they see some substance there. Smartass gadflies grate on the nerves, but a smartass who can then turn serious and talk in constructive terms is something else entirely.

So if Gingrich were to do what he says, and follow Obama around talking about what a lying POS he is and why what the president just said he wants to do in a second term is a disaster for the country, it might well be one of the most sensational presidential campaigns in American history.

Because you can absolutely bet your bottom dollar that Obama isn’t doing any Lincoln-Douglas debates with Newt Gingrich. He’d just as soon slit his wrists while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance as subject himself to that kind of humiliation.

Newt knows it, and that gives him a lot of freedom. It even probably innoculates him against the campaign Obama’s people would cook up against him. Here he is running after Obama talking about actual issues that affect people and here’s David Axelrod repeating lies about how Newt hit his first wife up for a divorce on her deathbed (yeah, that story is actually bat guano). Who looks more like a chump?

Romney can’t run this kind of campaign. Only Gingrich can. And for a party in need of some happy confidence, he might just be the guy who beats Obama.