Historians are still studying the cultural impact of the 1992 presidential campaign, but it was strikingly evident to many of us attending the stormy Republican National Convention in Houston that August. When former President Ronald Reagan’s address paled alongside Pat Buchanan’s divisive, defiant speech demanding public morality and condemning radical feminism and gay rights, we knew something pretty historic was going on.

Buchanan was supposedly giving a pep speech supporting the re-election of President George H.W. Bush, with whom he jousted in the GOP primaries. But it clearly sounded like a rallying cry for something else. Then and there, many of us, Republicans and the press, began wondering how it would play out on Main Street USA.

We soon got our answer: Bush’s defeat, widely credited to Texan Ross Perot and the strident tone out of Houston.

The entire convention crackled with a sort of electricity that week. Bodybuilder-turned-movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger was there, surging in popularity in some Republican circles, even if his marriage to NBC newswoman Maria Shriver of the Kennedy clan made him suspect. Rush Limbaugh, gaining fame for his conservative rants on radio, was viewed with god-like reverence by some GOP followers.

But the real intrigue came from some Dallas Republicans I spent time with. They made clear their utter disdain for another rising star in the party: vocal Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich. They said things about him so despicable you couldn’t print them in a newspaper. Their criticism involved adultery, affairs and his supposedly serving his first wife with divorce papers while she was in the hospital for cancer treatment — an apparent exaggeration, but not by much.

Twenty years later, these scandals still dog Gingrich — except instead of involving his cheating on his first wife with the woman who became his second wife, they now involve his cheating on his second wife with the woman who became his third wife. Add the hypocrisy of a man committing adultery while loudly pressing similar allegations against President Bill Clinton and you have real problems for a political party that champions “family values.”

It raises valid questions for Republicans: Can our nation’s leaders champion family values when their lives don’t match all the rhetoric? There’s a reason that Americans encourage their children to learn about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington — and it’s not just their greatness in war and politics.

One wonders, too, about anyone who, in a presidential campaign, makes a vow to stay married to his present wife just to reassure some Iowa voters, as Gingrich did recently. Hasn’t he taken that vow three times before? Given that presidents are supposed to embody our values and that first ladies take charge of everything from health initiatives to literacy campaigns, are questions like the controversial one about Gingrich’s publicly rankled second wife during the South Carolina debate not still relevant?

Perhaps voters should play it safe and instead gauge Gingrich’s fidelity to his many policy stances over the years. At the very least, he rivals Mitt Romney when it comes to shifting positions on key issues, beginning with the health care mandates that so inflame the base. And you have to wonder about the sincerity of someone who claims he’s a fiscal hawk, yet wants to set up a colony of people on the moon this decade — a venture that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Wildly unconstitutional ideas like subpoenaing judges and ignoring judicial decisions outright obscure more credible ones like his anti-poverty plan.

Even conservative standard-bearers are running scared at the prospect of Gingrich as nominee because of his quicksilver personality. Last week, Ann Coulter wrote that Gingrich as the nominee would guarantee President Barack Obama’s re-election. And former House GOP Leader Tom DeLay has blasted him as “erratic, undisciplined.”

For those of us who heard Pat Buchanan raise the rafters that memorable night in Houston 20 years ago, one thing is clear: This whole business of public morality sure doesn’t come easy.

Twitter            Facebook